The Ivory Merchants
by Heliopause
Summary: In the early years of the Golden Age, traders seeking access to Narnia set off a chain of events leading to intrigue, sorrow and adventure. Rated T for accounts of historic (off-screen) violence and cruelty. Canon-compliant.
1. First contact

_This story owes much to Avia Tantella Scott's sad, lovely story 'What the Elephants Forgot' ( s/6373192/1/What-the-Elephants-Forgot). And I owe a huge amount to other writers, too, fanfiction being what it is. These are too many to name them all, and I expect there are influences I am not even properly conscious of, but readers will surely see traces of cofax's work and of rthstewart's. Thanks to all of you, and of course to C.S. Lewis!_

**o-o-o-o-o**

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter One: First contact**

**Oddly**, the merchants had come before the ambassadors; it was merchant-traders who had brought the first awareness to the four monarchs of newly-delivered Narnia, that other countries lay outside their borders, and across the seas. The merchants had begun to appear late in that strange, confused summer, several months after the defeat of the White Witch, when the Four had completed their first survey of the kingdom, and were beginning to know their subjects, and their responsibilities.

It was a shock, and a little disconcerting, to realise that the world was so much greater than they had known, and they struggled to assimilate the information they were gaining, and to memorise the strange new names - Archenland, Telmar, Galma, Calormen... and the apparent locations of each place - to the south, to the west, over the sea, and beyond the great desert. ("There's a desert?" Lucy had gasped, astonishment overcoming their usual caution. The Calormene spice-merchant had smiled - kindly enough, but Susan also noted, with the beginnings of unease, that there had been a hint of secret satisfaction in that smile.)

But the Calormene had been smooth in his speaking, and utterly, ungraspably persuasive in his representations of the benefits of trade, and the Four had found themselves nearly agreeing to his very moderate requests, almost before they knew it. The requests were so modest, indeed, that it would have felt churlish to refuse - he asked only to be allowed to bring goods to the Cair Paravel wharfs once each year, in late autumn, he suggested, and to offer them there for sale to any who would buy.

There would be, he had stressed reassuringly, no incursion into Narnia beyond the wharf itself, and then, while Peter was still hesitating, on hearing the word "incursion" - had seemed to drop the request altogether, while he summoned attendants to bring forward a succession of chests, each to be opened it with a flourish, revealing a bewilderingly numerous array of spices, of aromatic and many-coloured seeds, roots and barks - and powders, and dusts, and unguents and balms, healing ointments, perfumes and oils, essences, distillations...

From behind his throne, Peter had heard Windseer's quiet murmur, that some of these were indeed of great merit, for healing, for rubbing heat into old and winter-struck bodies, and for easing pain and bringing sleep; they were difficult to obtain in Narnia, he had said. If the merchant heard that, he gave no sign, but, gesturing to all the panoply of healing, delicacy and luxury, as if to indicate that that array pleaded his case more than words could do, murmured with lowered eyes that benevolence was a stream which watered many gardens, and that the wisdom of rulers was a light to... his voice sank away into a complacent murmuring, and it seemed that he was understanding that he had already been granted the permission he had asked.

"We cannot guarantee that any of our people would wish to buy, though, Master Trader," Peter warned, uncertainly.

The merchant bowed deep, with lowered eyes, his hands sunk open at his sides, in a gesture at once of supplication and acceptance. "To be permitted to offer is all I ask of Your Majesties' so-greatly-admired munificence... " he began, and seemed on the point of beginning his retreat, assuming both permission to trade, and permission to depart.

Behind the throne Windseer stamped one hoof, edgily, and Tumnus looked across warningly; this trader was on the verge of failing in respect to the new rulers of Narnia.

Peter spoke hurriedly. "Master Spicer! We have not yet given that permission! We require that..." He thought quickly; the man must not be allowed to think that he had held the initiative throughout the interview, that Narnia's rulers were mere biddable children in matters of trade. "You must go tomorrow to our harbourmaster, who will determine where and when you will be allowed to offer goods for sale on our wharves. Initially, this will be for one day only in the year, and on that day Narnian spicers will also offer goods for sale."

There _was_ no harbourmaster. Only the rulers themselves and their personal advisors understood how scanty was the staffing of Narnia's government, still, after months of hard work to construct some sort of administration. But of those advisors the two standing closest to the throne would be quick to pick up the cue, and to cover the deficiency, Peter knew.

"Master Tumnus! Please escort this petitioner to our guest-quarters, and advise him of when he may meet the Harbourmaster. He is to remain in the guest-quarters until that meeting."

Tumnus bowed, with an added inclination of his head, to convey to Peter that he understood that he was to find someone to carry out the role of harbourmaster, at least until the spice-trader had gone. The actual trading, Peter supposed, would need to be delayed for some months - for surely no Narnian spicers would be prepared for trade so soon?

But the audience, thank heavens, was over. Windseer was proclaiming their majesties' departure, and all four could stand, nod acknowledgement to the courtesies of the assembled guests, merchants, petitioners and well-wishers, and - at last! - retreat to their private rooms.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Well, that went well!" Peter commented bitterly.

"It did, actually." Susan's assessment was, as ever, both considered and reassuring. "It's okay. He tried it on, and you slapped him down. It's okay. Narnia is no worse off tonight than it was this morning!"

She grinned at him, and reluctantly he half-smiled back.

"_Narnia is no worse off tonight..._" It had become a catch-phrase between the two of them, half-serious, as they tried to consider if they were actually filling their responsibility for the well-being of this country, and half a reminder that they needed not to take too stressfully every small blunder in fighting their way to being the monarchs Narnia needed. The younger pair seemed able to take their responsibility more lightly. Edmund was serious enough, certainly, but he tended to dive straight to the assessing of situations, and consideration of plans of action, not to dwell on the small details of each day's encounters; Lucy seemed able to be totally involved in each moment, energetically, joyfully, and sometimes furiously, dealing with the reality, and letting shadowy imagined possibles pass her by.

She spoke now, with forthright confidence. "It's true about a spice-trade being necessary - or useful, anyway. Windseer was in favour of it, and he should know."

"Yes, but... I've gone and said that Narnia will have spices and things to trade with, though. Right fools we'll look if we can't come up with anything except mint sauce!"

"Nothing wrong with mint sauce!" Edmund grinned - new peas and minted potatoes had been their main meal that day.

"There's plenty," said Susan briskly. "juniper berries... I bet they don't have those! Caraway seed!"

"And there was medicines, too," Lucy offered. "There are lots of plants they use here for healing."

"Yes. And it doesn't even matter if they _do_ already have the stuff we've got, what's important that we can show that we can get along _without_ their trade, that we don't _need_ these other countries. I was thinking today, while Pete was doing the talking, that it's not just trade deals happening."

"How do you mean?"

"Think about it, Ed! Even if they are just merchants, not ambassadors, they're still the first contact we've had outside of Narnia, and how we deal with them will set the tone, more or less, for how things go on when we _do_ get ambassadors."

Edmund frowned, considering. "Then would it be a good idea to stop all visits until we can be sure we're doing it right? I mean, you don't trade without treaties and things, do you? What if we find out later that they had _our_ permission, but not their home governments?"

"The point is, they're here, and we have to deal with them." Peter pressed his lips together, in the way that his siblings already knew meant determination to complete an unpleasant task.

Ed tried once more. "Maybe we should just declare that we won't receive any trade delegations for a time, then."

"Won't help with the ones already here. A ship came in from Galma this afternoon, and those men from the west are still to be seen. So... that's tomorrow morning gone, anyway, I expect. How's about we leave it for now, and take some time for... anything that's not trade?"

And then, to Edmund's protesting scowl: "We'll meet in the morning, the four of us, and Windseer and Tumnus, and see if we can rough out some ground rules. That do for now?"

Edmund's eyes met Susan's and the scowl vanished. "I'll have something in writing by then! And if I don't miss my guess, our thoughtful sister is also making plans!"

"Just might be, Ed. Just _might_ be!"

**o-o-o-o-o**

It was a good morning's work. The main points of a trade policy were sketched out, and a policy for dealing with visits. It was agreed that no further trade delegation would be received until the following spring (the first not-magic spring, as Lucy said) and Ravens were sent to each border crossing and port to spread word of that decision.

Edmund had drawn up tables showing the goods offered so far, of the items which might be desirable; he had already made notes of all information they had gleaned about the countries from which the traders had come. Susan came with plans for a trade fair, to be held for a full week in midsummer, when all future potential traders would be invited to display goods under the watchful walls of Cair Paravel, before any further trade arrangements would be accepted. Narnia's strengths, economically, were scrutinised, and arrangements made to have representatives of the most likely trades and produce brought for further conference, to prepare for the trade fair.

"It's been good," Peter acknowledged at the morning's end. "We should set up regular meetings like this, to think ahead - and get advice, too." He nodded his thanks to the two subject-advisors who had joined them.

"Your Majesty might give thought to reinstating the Councils of old," Windseer responded; then in answer to Peter's enquiring look, "The monarchs were always wont to have a Council, Sire. Narnians of all kinds contributed to it."

"Trees, as well? Naiads?" Lucy asked.

"Not always, Your Majesty, "but always some water-dweller, and some earth-dweller. Centaurs served as earth-dwellers, I know, from time to time."

"To represent all types of Narnians," Edmund commented. "It's a good idea. Peter?"

"Yes. We'll talk further of it, Windseer. Are there records of how it was set up?" The Centaur looked his regret. "Well... we'll look into it. And shall we take a break and deal with the last two lots after lunch?"

The last two delegations, from Galma in the east, and from Telmar in the west - a country whose borders no-one of the Narnian advisors had been able to clearly delineate: "Let's start with the Galman," Edmund suggested. "Once we've finished with him, we'll be able to take our time, and find out a bit more about Telmar."

**o-o-o-o-o**

Hoom and Gul did not move their eyes from the Four when these strange young-seeming rulers re-entered, nor when they were signed to stand back, and it was the Galman who was called to the presence to put his petition. To be able to watch a foregoer was to lie downwind, and much advantage could accrue from being second to speak; without looking at each other, the Telmarine brothers knew that both were satisfied to wait. They stood stolidly, immovably watching, therefore, as the tall Galman strode confidently to stand before the dais.

From where they stood, they could hear that this session began, as had that of the days before, with courteous enquiries about the trader's journey - simple, affable conversation, but Hoom judged that the Four were alert enough to glean from it information as well as pleasantry. Too, the words of the Galman should be stored for Telmarine use. Galma, it seemed, was three days' sailing away -"we'd be quicker sailing once we get trade established again, Your Majesties. We were just in the first ship we could find willing to make the voyage west, it being summer, and the main of the merchant fleet off away east to the Seven Islands... "

Much of the conversation which followed was too low to catch, but information came in more than speech. Gul noted the Galman's constant covert glancing at Tumnus and Windseer; so Fauns and Centaurs were unknown on Galma, then? How this could be useful he would leave to Hoom to define, but it was good to know more about the world that Telmar was just beginning to be able to re-enter, at any rate. And there was a tale, too, told by the Galman's garb and kit; if it had not the soft brightness of the haughty Calormene merchant's, clearly Galma was solid in less showy wealth, and richer far than the impoverished riddle that was witch-defeating Narnia. Galma wore not silk, but still, the signs of wealth were there; his boots and his belt were finely-tooled and shining leather, not rough-hide.

And now the Galman had summoned from behind a servant to bring for presentation some gift to the Four. Hoom sidled a glance at it as it passed - a wooden contrivance of some sort, of dark fine-grained wood, and inlaid with some stone, it seemed, which shone in gentle colour, like clouds at full-moon rising. A gift which seemed to please the Four greatly; Hoom watched closely; they seemed to be looking delightedly while the trader showed off how it opened and folded, and refolded in a new appearance. Some device for travelling , or to travel with, it seemed, for: "We have heard in far Galma of your great and triumphal progress around your new dominions."

_Well, so they had in Telmar! And this Galman gift may seem to please them, but Telmar's gift - though carried in rough-tanned hide, not dainty leather! - was surely of much greater value. _

Now the High King moved the conversation on to matters of trade. Hoom noted that he spoke more clearly now; to be heard by the whole Hall. It was a good sign; nothing was to be agreed behind the hand, it seemed.

"We see clearly that Galma produces items of great beauty and delicacy; was it such as this that you thought to bring to Narnia as merchandise, Trader?"

The Galman's voice rang with buoyant assurance. "My business here would be to buy, not to sell, Majesty!"

"You are well-informed, then, of what Narnia has to offer Galma," the king responded coolly. Hoom marked that he did not stoop to ask what commodity could have brought a merchant so far on the chance of spending, not earning; this king kept the extent of his knowledge, if indeed he knew, as his own secret.

"Ah, Majesty! the soft warmth of not just our Duke's courtiers but of many of the wealthiest Tarkaans in Calormen, on cold desert nights, has come from Narnia. It has been a luxury trade, and one which I hope may resume with Your Majesties' approval and blessing."

"Approval and blessing will need a more precisely-worded request, however."

That there were sheep-runs on the high plains of Narnia as there were in Telmar, Hoom knew, but would a merchant come so far, and bring a choice gift purely to dicker about a trade in wool?

Now the king leant forward, and fixed the merchant with a sharp smile.

"Come, sir! Name precisely what it is you wish; and," he seemed to Hoom to pounce with a sudden leap. "what of those _other_ ships 'away east to the Seven Islands'? D_o you come on behalf of yourself alone, or of other merchants from Galma_?"

The trader's broad back jerked, and his warm-hued neck flushed a little warmer. "Yes, you're.. you're right. The others don't know I'm here. But, Majesty," the words came now in an eager rush, "_they've_ had a grip on the trade all these years, and surely now, with a new reign, it is a good time to open it up again?"

High King Peter kept a blandly encouraging silence, and the trader persisted: "If you were thinking of granting a monopoly again..."

"Mmmmm...? a monopoly...?"

"Your Majesty! I could arrange it all! The hunting, the skinning...the tanning. The best prices... bear-pelts, the ermines, beaver-skins... " He was speaking now very rapidly; his voice even trembled with the excitement of his greed, his rapacity... He seemed to gasp as he spoke, with his avidity. But then something... a rigidity in the room, perhaps, penetrated his obliviousness. His speech died on his lips.

There was a terrible silence.

The Four, enthroned - no, the youngest had risen, and stood gripping, _hard_ - Hoom saw that her knuckles were bone-white - the shoulder of the High King. The eyes of the other Queen were boring into the Galman merchant, skewering him, inescapably; exposed, analysed and utterly rejected. The younger King was breathing rapidly, his lips pressed together as if on some deathly sickness.

The High King Peter spoke, stiffly, and very coldly. He seemed to Hoom suddenly much older than he had seemed minutes earlier; his voice had lost its lightness, and the words ground out of him like two stones grinding together.

"We - do - not - _trade_ in the bodies - the _skins _- of our subjects, and our Cousins_. _Leave."

Hoom saw that the Galman hesitated, seemingly on the verge of protest, but the High King bore him down, inexorably.

"Take - your - _filthy_, blood-stained hands - out of our court, and _out_ of our kingdom."

"He is a murderer," came in a high, tightly-controlled whisper from the younger Queen. "He asked our _approval_..."

The High King raised one hand and put it on hers, but did not speak to her, still addressing himself to the trader.

"Had you not revealed that you yourself have not so traded in this country - that _others_ have "had a grip on the trade", very assuredly you would now be on trial for murder of our Cousins and well-beloved subjects. Get you gone, and make it known to all Galma, and all lands - _this vile traffic is no more_. Guards!"

Two long, rangy forms which had lain unnoticed by the door rose now - Hoom stiffened, startled - and padded softly closer.

"Take them to their ship and see them sail before one more hour has passed."

The guards closed in, with low, deep growling. The Galman gasped. "Your Majesty! We need to provision... to take on water..."

"_Get - you - gone._"

The guards snarled with sudden terrifying savagery, and the Galman shrank back, and turned and scuttered from the Hall.

The High King watched with hard eyes, then spoke, sharply and decisively.

"We will... prorogue this reception. Men of Telmar! Be with us in two hours' time. My Royal Sisters, Brother..." He stood, and left and right they stood with him, all very tightly controlling, it seemed, whatever it was that had moved them. As one, they nodded acknowledgement to the courtesies of the Hall, and then all Four left together.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The door was shut and they were alone, and in an instant Lucy was against Peter's chest, the strong felted wool of his jerkin muffling the first sounds of her anguish; he cradled the back of her head with one hand, the other arm wrapped close around her, in helpless attempt at comfort. Susan swung around and caught at Edmund, and pulled them all close together, one tight huddle of sorrow at this knowledge of what Narnia had endured.

It was many minutes before Lucy's sobbing quietened, before they all began to breathe a little more normally, and the tightness of their clinging began to break apart. Still keeping her face pressed against her brother's chest, Lucy spoke, in half-choked horror. "He said _beav._.." She could not even say it. "He w-wanted to... he asked our _blessing_..."

"It's okay, Lu" Susan reached out one hand to caress her sister's head, sweeping the hair back a little from the averted face. "It doesn't mean anything at all, to _bless_ something so horrible. He was just speaking nonsense words to say that..."

Peter looked at her. "You weren't as surprised as the rest of us?"

She frowned, and mouthed, rather than spoke, her reply. "Tell you later. Something Mrs Beaver said."

He nodded a troubled acquiescence, and switched his attention to Lucy.

"Come on, Lu. Look up! It's all finished now and we will never let that happen again."

"No." She burrowed in a little more, then risked one glance up at him. "You were..._scary!_"

"I was a bit out of it, lost control a bit ... I wouldn't want to scare you, Lu..."

"You were," interrupted Edmund, with fierce deliberation, "_bloody magnificent_."

"Steady up, Ed!"

"No - Lucy and I can stand to hear that much 'bad language'!" Susan looked at the High King, measuringly. "And furthermore... " she let a loving, very knowing and amused sister's smile complete her sentence: _he's right._

The rest of the two hours' break went in rest-and-repair. Faces washed. A brew of hot lemon-and-honey, breathing in the fumes, and then slow sipping, slowly coming back to equanimity.

Consultation with Tumnus, and learning of the terrible devastation among the Beavers of Narnia ("_and that's why they're pretty much on their own, now. I think it's part of why they put everything they had at risk to protect you. It was as if they had another chance to save their own..._"). From Windseer, news of how so many Beasts had fled to the west or the north, as Humans had fled east over the sea, or south to Archenland.

"We will call them back," said Lucy.

"We need to be sure of them, first," said Edmund.

And then a quiet time with just four again, together.

"Like a Lioness, little sister? A Queen?"

"Yes. I can do it."

"Everyone? Aslan's given it to us to do, so..."

"So we do it. We get it, Pete. Let's go."

And then out again.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Let the men of Telmar approach."

No sign remained of the storm of two hours earlier. The four monarchs set their eyes with studied calm on the approaching Telmarines, rough men, and roughly accoutred , but plainly doing their best to adjust to the ways of the Narnian court. The leader seemed ill-at-ease with the ordinary courtesies of meeting, and awkwardly moved to more direct matters.

"Ahhh... We've brought a ..a gift, Your Highness...es. It's...very valuable."

"We welcome you for yourself, and for your people's willingness to engage with ours," said Peter. "We do not look for gifts."

"It's very valuable," the man repeated. He kept a close grip on the small object he held in his hands - not two handspans long, Peter gauged, and barely one wide - perhaps a palmwidth high, or a little more. The man was not a seasoned or graceful negotiator; he held it as if it would be given as a prize - or as a bribe. Peter consciously crushed the irritation he felt, set himself to hear patiently what the man had to say.

"We were wanting... it's important for Telmar to be able to travel through Narnia. The Troubles were hard on us as well as on Narnia, Your... Highnesses."

Peter leaned forward encouragingly. The man stumbled on.

"We ...it's a hard road to try to get over the southern mountains to Calormen. We... _Narnia_ cuts us off from the coast!" He sounded as if he resented the very shape of the land - well, there was nothing to be done about that!

"I mean, that's... We..." He straightened himself, and came to the heart of his petition - evidently a speech got by rote. "We, Men of Telmar, rejoice with you that the frozen roads and rivers are open again. We request safe passage through your land and by your rivers to your ports, for our trading."

Well, so he had made his speech. Peter moved to draw out further information from the man. "And what goods would you take to trade, Master Merchant?"

The man seemed to take a desperate resolution. He stepped forward, and went down on one knee, offering with both hands to Peter the thing that he had carried, and till this moment had held tight.

"If we can get permission just to cross..." he began, then rethought. "This is a free gift to you, Your Majesty."

_But you hope very much that it will have all the effect of a bribe_, Peter thought wearily. However, the man's clumsiness should sway the decision no more than the Calormene's suavity.

"Our decision does not rest on gifts made," he stated, dispassionately. "You will be very welcome to leave it or to take it, as you will." Then, as the man seemed a little disheartened, "well, let us see what Telmar has brought to show to us."

The man's eyes flashed. He quickly undid the wrappings around the object and thrust it towards the king.

It was a small casket, standing on a low silver filigree base, and with softly gleaming silver cornerpieces encasing sides of old, carved, ivory and finely-stippled silver-grey leather, and a gently curved top - a breath-takingly beautiful work of the maker's art. It bespoke - and, unconsciously, Peter reached out towards it, took it - it bespoke _love_, as well as art, in the making. It was not new, clearly a treasure of many years, perhaps centuries.

Peter turned it in his hands, mesmerised. _Nothing_ in the outward appearance of these men had hinted at such delicacy, or appreciation of beauty. He was conscious of Susan at his side, leaning forward, and shifted, holding the casket so that she could see it more closely; she, of them all, would be gladdened by its perfect artistry.

There was a silence; he looked sideways to her, and their eyes met in agreement, smiling, and a little regretful. The Witch had left very little of such made loveliness in Narnia. But...

"This gift..." Queen Susan spoke, slowly, and very gently. "... it is a great treasure of your people?"

Peter smiled again at her gentleness; she loved the casket, but her deep feeling for others and their needs over-rode that. He spoke, to make more plain what she had hinted. "We could not take from Telmar something which we see well is a very precious heritage."

There was a small noise from behind the throne, a shifting of hoofs, a Centaur-tail swishing. "That's Narnian Dwarf work!" Windseer breathed. "The silversmiths of the west..."

"No. No..." the man was answering Susan's question, his eyes flicking anxiously from her to the High King. "It's Narnian. It's very old. That's ivory from Narnian elephants."

"Narnian elephants?" Susan paused; her hand fluttered above the casket.

"Narnian Elephants?" Lucy's voice was lit by an incredulous joy. "I didn't know there were _Elephants_ in Narnia!"

"There are none," Windseer's low voice came from behind. "There are no Elephants in Narnia. Do you not think, Majesties, that if there were such they would have assembled to do honour to your coronation, to honour Aslan?"

"But... not now, maybe, but it might be like you said, that they left Narnia because of the Winter?" Lucy eagerly. "We could tell them it's over, and call them back to us!"

"Your Majesty," the Centaur spoke warningly; clearly he felt that this was not a discussion to have in open assembly. "There have been old legends and tales, but alas, I have no knowledge that such creatures ever did exist in Narnia, or not as thinking, talking Beasts."

"If I may speak..." Tumnus' light rapid voice, a little anxious, a little hopeful.

"Speak, Tumnus."

"There was..." Mr Tumnus' eyes were squeezed shut, and his hands were pressed against each side of his head.

"There was an old rhyme... my father used to gather folklore, that sort of thing. He was a scholar really... he used to try to get me to remember all sorts of old rhymes..."

They waited, eyes fixed on him as he rocked to and fro, murmuring scattered phrases.

"Six sages, six in kind... no. That can't be right, should be seven... 'Sharp-eyed Ravens...' I know they were in it... Last... Lumbers... Yes! Yes... listen, majesties! It's what we were talking about, the Council!"

He leapt up, and stood erect, with his hands clasped behind his back, and for a moment they saw him as the little faun he had once been, reciting for his long-gone father:

"_Lumbers large, the last to council,_  
"_Elephant of well-won wisdom_  
"_Came to join at Aslan's calling..._"

"That's from the Song of the First Council! There was an _Elephant_ on the First Council, Majesties. And so the Narnian Elephants _were_ Talking Elephants!"

"Thank you, Mr Tumnus." Peter glanced across at Lucy. Her eyes were shining, and her lips were parted in breathless excitement. He was swept by relief and gladness; whatever the current reality of the elephants, the thought of them had at least helped her past the anguish of the day's dealings. Well, for her sake, and to assuage Windseer's unease...

"Sir Trader, this matter concerns our people and must now be dealt with privately. Take your rest tonight, and know both your gift and your visit are welcome. We will talk more of these trade routes with you tomorrow."

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: And there it is... a first chapter, and now it's over to the readers! (I would very much like to hear how you felt about it, of course.) For those much-appreciated readers who have asked: this isn't the Resistance-world story; there are a couple of those simmering, but I had to deal with this one first! **


	2. Views east and west

_As mentioned earlier, this story owes a lot to Avia Tantella Scott's 'What the Elephants Forgot' ( s/6373192/1/What-the-Elephants-Forgot) . And to the inspiring other writers on this site, as mentioned before (oh, and special thanks for the wise advice, greaves!) and to the encouraging readers. Thank you all! (You, too, C.S. Lewis. :) )  
_

**o-o-o-o-o**

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Two: Views east and west **

The knowledge of the evil done to the Beavers of Narnia was still with them; he would still find Susan at some quiet minute and ask her exactly what she had learned from Mrs Beaver, and between they would try to find some way to... there must be some way to heal it, that evil. And it was not just the Beavers, but others as well, and Edmund's eyes still had the shadow of that dark look, that heart-wrenching _wariness_, and Lucy - she would still circle back to the sorrow, he knew, when she was able to face it.

But right now, right _now_ the excitement of thinking that maybe, _maybe_ some Narnians had escaped the terror and could be called back, and especially the thrill that it was Elephants... right now that had filled all their minds to the exclusion of everything else.

Peter shook himself a little, grinned one more time at his excited little sister, ardently calling on Tumnus to _"think!"_ about the old rhymes and stories, and turned with more serious face to speak quietly with Windseer, alone.

"Your Majesty?"

"There are _wonderful_ possibilities, Windseer, but I don't want to forget the business of the day."

"The trade negotiations?"

"Yes. We ended the meeting too soon, with the Telmarines; I am thinking that they will have believed that we had agreed to this trade routes business."

"Your Majesty wishes otherwise?"

"No... it's more that I don't like feeling that we let the whole business slip away because we got excited."

"As I recall, you made no decision."

"I accepted his gift. I think he might have thought it was a ... price."

"All the more reason to go back to negotiations." Susan's cool voice was unexpectedly close at his right hand. "We have to make it utterly clear that no-one can influence our policies that way."

"And I'd like to learn more from them about Telmar itself, too," Edmund struck in, looking up from his attempt to gather together Tumnus' scraps of rhyme into written form. "We know hardly anything."

What on earth was the _use_ of being High King, Peter wondered, if everyone always chimed in when he was trying to think? Though Su had always been good at organising things; he turned to her, resignedly.

"So what do _you_ think, then, about them coming through to trade? Is there any reason we shouldn't agree?"

"Well, I think it's probably bad policy to just give people we don't know free right to go through the land whenever they like."

"On the other hand," Ed was frowning a little, thinking ahead, "if there _are_ Elephants out there somewhere, _we_ might have to go through _their_ territory to get to them."

"Oh!" Lucy's attention had been caught by the word. "Are we going to find the Elephants?"

"Not exactly." He gave up any idea of private consultation. "Our royal brother here was saying that when we're settling this trade route business with the Telmarines, we might want to bargain to travel through Telmar ourselves, to see what we can find out."

"If I may, Your Majesties...?"

"Tumnus?"

"It might be wiser to send Birds to search for them, or for word of their passing."

"Good thinking! And not just Elephants, but any other Beasts which have fled to the west, or the North. We must begin a calling back of our people."

"Yes! It's _horrible_ if they're still be out there, frightened. We should send out Birds, _now_!"

"Or tomorrow, anyway, Impatience! Eagles, Windseer? They would need to fly high."

"Or Ravens, Majesty. Eagles have a commanding presence, and the Elephants, if such there be, may not take kindly to what would seem like a command to return. Ravens speak directly and well, and moreover are wise in diplomacy."

"By Raven then. Does that set your mind at rest, Lucy?"

"Thank you!"

"It'll put us in a better negotiating position, too, with the Telmarines," Susan said thoughtfully, "if we don't absolutely _have_ to ask for permission to go over their land. Means they're the ones who're asking, and we've got a free hand."

"We still should try to get that, though, Pete. We don't know what we might need to do, even if the Birds can let us know what the situation is."

"Yes," Susan agreed, "but make it just a casual side-thing. Like maybe you could mention it, Ed, as if it's a whim."

"Oh, you're _good_ at this!" His spirits lifted; he might be High King, but to have all their voices part of the planning felt _good _now. "So... to sum up: tomorrow we negotiate with the Telmarines for a single trial trade mission through Narnia to our wharves in time for your trade fair - do we need to worry about what they're trading before then, do you think? - plus reciprocal private travelling rights for us in Telmar... for a year?"

"For a year initially, perhaps."

"Good. A return of lost Beasts and Men could bring us so _much_... we lost so _much_ because of the Witch and the Winter. Not just the people, but their skills, and their knowledge. Which reminds me: this Council, Windseer?"

"Majesty, not all servants can give all service, and of this history I know little. I think you will find more from Master Tumnus' rhymes than from me."

"Tumnus? Your rhyme spoke of seven sages?"

"Seven sages, six in kind," murmured Tumnus, automatically.

The king smiled. "Right... take time to remember the rest of it; I think we need to appoint a Council, as well as a Harbourmaster, and I want to do it right. Who _was_ appointed Harbourmaster, by the bye?"

"Koreek, Your Majesty. He'll be the speaker, and the one the seamen deal with, but his people will also herd the ships, and watch the wharves."

"Oh, _brilliant_ appointment, Tumnus! I can just see the way he'll watch the ships coming in, out there where he suns himself on that big rock halfway out. And with the other seals scouting, we'll always have advance notice of who's coming! Brilliant! _Nobody_ argues on a wharf with three hundred pounds of solid muscle! Oh, we'll get there! Koreek on the wharves, and the trade getting sorted, and our people returning, and Narnia being rebuilt... We _are_ getting there!"

Peter's sudden exultation lifted all of them; when the High King himself laughed with joy at their progress, who could do other?

**o-o-o-o-o**

The call came early in the morning, before the sun had risen; the chosen Ravens fluttered and hopped about the walls of the western parapet walk, nervous, excited and eager to begin the flight. Even when the High King stepped forward to speak to them, there was a fluffing and a shuffling of wings and turning of heads, a constant flickering of all their bright black eyes; it was movement, though, which rather attested to the razor-sharp alertness of their minds than to any inattention to the King's solemn words.

"Well-met here, Cousins. Well-met, Crimtwing, Pryclaw, Sallowpad! Well-met Quick-in-all, Sootfeather, Diamond, and Brightbeak. This is a great day for the rebuilding of Narnia; it is the Lion's own business, I believe, which is laid on you today.

"I charge you, good Ravens, to fly to the west, and to the north of west, and to the south of west, for three days and three nights, in the search for our lost people, as we sent word to you last night. From the air, it is our Elephants that you will find easiest to see, if anything can be easy to see above the Great Cliff, but we charge you to take the message of return to _all_ our people, wheresoever you find them.

"Fly now, as our hopes fly with you. We will look for you here, from the dawn of the fourth day, and Aslan's breath be under your wings."

Queen Susan spoke more simply, looking her love for them all: "It is your Cousins no less than mine you seek, dear friends. Fly well!". King Edmund added, also, "Fly well, and safely, Cousins." Queen Lucy looked up at the seven shapes, wings spread wide now in farewell bow, Raven-style. "And especially... _all_ of them... but _especially_ the Elephants."

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!" came in return to each, in seven harsh Raven voices, and then a mighty swooping and beating of wings and seven black shapes clove the air and spread away, fanning up and out, dwindling smaller and smaller yet, against the lightening sky, and they were gone.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The call came late in the morning - the sun was already up. Hoom had been hunkered down at Gul's side, not talking, since there was nothing they had to say that was not already known to both. They had made good progress yesterday; the kings had taken the gift, and honour should bind them now. Of the day to come - _what is not seen is not known_, and so there was no point to talking of it. But these people, who had come from a far place and had made the Winter melt away, and had taken Narnia for their own - Hoom was glad Gul was with him, in such an unchancy place, dealing with powers like these.

For as long as Hoom had lived - as long as his father's father had lived - there had been winter in Narnia, and the invader had ruled over a frozen, broken land, so that men looked down from their own land, and saw only deadness, with scattered black figures against the snow, singly or in chained lines, crouching and inching their way to live or die. Then times had been hard for Telmar, too, but at least there were the herds, and the great inexhaustible forests; then Telmar had looked at dead Narnia and known that survival and safety lay in staying under their own stars in their own land.

Now, though... _now_ the stranger kings had come, and had changed Narnia in an instant into a green, pleasant, fruitful land, and now it seemed possible that Telmarines could again travel safely through the lowlands to the sea's edge, and bargain there as Telmarines once had done, and survival would give way to prosperity again. But who these strangers were, and what their powers and ambitions were - these things were not yet seen.

They were not true lowlanders. The Goat-foot who had shown them to the rough guest quartering, close to the barracks of the fighters, had chattered about that. They had come from a land of eternal summer, he had said - from over the ill-omened sea, therefore, since the sun comes from there. Had come from away east, and had simply _moved in_ and dissolved the enchantment, and had taken the land of the Narnians for their own? _What is not seen is not known_, but these were unchancy beings.

And now it was the Goat-foot again, and they were summoned to the presence of the kings. Steady, sturdy, showing as little as they could of their thoughts, Hoom and Gul walked towards the Great Hall.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Welcome again, men of Telmar." It was the oldest king. "Our talk yesterday was broken off somewhat sharply. The word you brought, that there had been Elephants in Narnia in the past, called for conference."

Hoom waited. The king's sister smiled slightly and spoke. "And still calls for such. Master Hoom, what can you tell us of Narnian Elephants?"

"_What is not seen is not known_, Highness."

"Do you mean you have not seen Elephants?"

Hoom tensed. They had learned, he and Gul, from watching the Galman's dismissal, for daring to want to trade in hides of Narnian beasts, how these incoming rulers reached to claim whatever came near to their hand, beasts and hide and all.

"I have seen only _Telmar's_ elephants."

All Four now seemed intent, or even - Hoom's glance skimmed the row of thrones - agitated. The High King raised one hand slightly - it seemed to be a signal that only he was to speak.

"These Elephants in Telmar. Tell us of them."

Hoom felt Gul shift warily beside him, and understood. Gathering his courage, he moved to turn the talk back the way he would have it go.

"Highness, we have come here to ask if men of Telmar may walk through your land. It seems to me now that you would walk through _my_ land in words, but you will give no word to our main business here."

The High King seemed startled, and paused a moment to think.

"You say truly. Understand that we are not minded to make an agreement for all time here today, but only to discuss the terms of a _first_ trade trip, and that to be next summer, in the time of our great trade fair."

"We need not agree for all time," Hoom conceded.

"Also, Hoom, there is this. You have come here as a trader, but you speak of '_my_ land', as if you were a king. What authority have you to speak for Telmar? Has the King of Telmar sent you here?"

"The men of Telmar have no king; they have sent me here not as a trader, but as speaker, to ask that the roads be opened again to us for trade freely. I speak for them."

"Very well. We offer you this: that Telmarines may come one time next year to trade as you will, to the wharves for our great fair at midsummer, when other traders will come; we will likewise walk during that year through _your_ land, to see for ourselves the elephants there."

"_One_ visit for men of Telmar, who must come to one place only, and Narnia asks leave to walk for a year, freely, as elephants roam?" He let his scornful smile give the negative.

The kings exchanged a glance. The elder king spoke. "We would know before we came to your land where we would go, and travel only to that place, though stopping as need be on the way. If the Elephants are Narnian, we will know where to find them."

_And so their reaching began! _

"Highness, they are _not_ Narnian!"

He felt himself letting anger rule his voice, and stopped and began again. "Consider, Highnesses. The Great Cliff lies between these lowlands and the Men of Telmar. I think Narnian Elephants could not climb the narrow ways that we use; even for Men it can be hard to come those ways."

"But _what is not seen is not known_," broke in the younger king, mockingly. "You may know trade matters, but if you have not seen Narnian Elephants, how can you say that they could not climb? Come for your one visit, and maybe I will travel back with you Telmarines and try for myself these _narrow ways_ you speak of."

A mistake. A mistake to have mentioned those defiles and hidden passages. If this king travelled in his company and learned the ways into Telmar...

But... he bent his head to think over what was known... no army could come unseen, or come those ways; no large force could threaten Telmar, therefore, and if men came singly, they could not defeat the forest.

"So let it be, Highness! Your brother has said, a visit for a visit. Let there be, as your brother has said, a first trading trip this year by men of Telmar, to trade as we will, and other trading trips thereafter as we may agree, and a single visit to walk our land _with us_ in return. So you have offered, and so I accept."

The younger king spoke very quick in reply. "To _first_ travel the narrow ways in such company, but not a single visit. I require free right of travel through that year, to find the Elephants!"

Hoom felt the anger begin to rise in him. They reached, and they would take what they could.

"You have offered to travel in Telmarine company. _So you offered, and so I accepted._ You may not travel alone in Telmar."

The elder king interposed. "If we allow you to trade through Narnia..."

"_If!_" Hoom felt Gul stir at his side, and tensed himself for whatever might come. "Do you make a bargain, and then talk of _if_?"

The two kings likewise tensed, and behind, Hoom could hear a harsh animal exhalation. No-one spoke.

The moment was broken by a soft voice, addressing neither the kings nor Hoom. It was the king's sister.

"Master Tumnus, please bring for us cool drink. These talks grow somewhat... heated." She smiled at Hoom, as if she and he shared a joke between them. He did not smile back, certainly he had not smiled back, but maybe she saw something of the easing of his anger in his face; her smile grew warmer, and still a little mischievous, still as if there was a joke in the air between the two of them, though her next words were addressed to the High King.

"King and Brother, let us talk of easier things. These journeys _will_ be made, eventually. Let us talk of the land, or the goods to be traded, or any quiet matter."

The High King nodded, and, as the beakers of cool minted water were brought and passed, resumed in quieter vein.

"My royal sister speaks wisely. Let us talk not of _if,_ but of _how_ these journeys shall be made. Telmar we know is to the west, and to the west, above the Great Cliff, we think is forest. Is this your land? "

Hoom considered how much to tell these people, who demanded and demanded and still did not give certainty. But if the trade was to be extended for more than one journey it was as well to speak softly, and move gently; maybe it was that she saw that they shared that knowledge which had led the king's sister to smile at him.

"Yes, Lord. We are people of the High Lands."

"And how far does your land go, to the west, or the south or the north?"

Hoom shook his head. "We are free men, not shut in boxes, as lowland countries are. We move as we need."

The younger king raised his eyebrows. "So you do not build lasting cities? You do not farm? How do you live? How can you trade?"

He felt a quick spark of resentment. These people despised Telmar as poor, but they were no wealthier, despite their great castle; had they not seized eagerly on the treasure he had brought, as one poor remnant of all that had once been?

"We have the forest, and our herds, goats and sheep. We live well."

"Your pardon, Hoom," said the High King, and again Hoom felt, unwillingly, a little easing of his anger, that this man of power should ask his pardon, "my royal brother Edmund did not wish to offend. But living well does not mean great matter to trade. It may be that you have seeds or fruit of virtue, as you saw the Calormene boast two days back?"

Well, such they had, but that was a matter for the wisemother, not for strangers or for trade. And - Hoom made a quick judgement - it was as well to be clear now, before a shipment was in danger of seizure, what trade came from Telmar.

"Lord, we move in a hard country indeed, nevertheless it has its goods of value. Our gift to you yesterday was Narnian work, and Narnian materials, but from forgotten times, when these eastern lands had elephant herds. But more latterly, only the elephants of the west survived; therefore, if any desired this material, in my grandfather's grandfather's time, they traded with the west for it, and from that trade came much that was good to Telmar. Therefore, we would renew the trade which was blocked by the Troubles."

"Ivory?" the king called Edmund asked, very quickly.

"Yes, Lord." Hoom watched the king narrowly. "From _Telmarine_ elephants, which grow and live and die in Telmarine lands."

It was not the king, but the younger sister who spoke.

"Peter!..._Peter_... if they are _Narnians!_"

"Lord...they are not Narnian!" Once again, he heard anger in his voice, and fought to control it. Calm ways are best to move the herd, and if these kings of Narnia were to be herded the path Telmar chose, then quiet ways were best for now. "Ours are mere dumb beasts, wandering the forests and hills of Telmar."

"The elephants in Telmar do not speak?"

"Lord, for more than twenty years I have lived beside the Dapplerun River, where the elephant pulled the ferry-rope back and forth through the flood, and never did that elephant speak. And I have seen many other elephants in Telmar, great bulls and little calves, but never have I heard these speak."

He saw doubt on the faces of the king's sister, and of the younger king, and he continued, still more calmly and clearly, to convince, "Do you not have here, as my brother and I saw well, stabled close to where we have slept these last nights, both Horses that think and speak as men, and horses which are mere dumb beasts? Therefore may it not have been the same, once, with these other beasts? Truly, I have not seen and do not know what once was in this land, but in my own land, I know this, I have never heard the elephants speak, nor seen them think or feel as Men."

"_Peter!_" in an urgent whisper.

"I must consider this matter. If these elephants are Narnian..."

"Lord," Hoom spoke very softly, to be clear, but not to startle, "your word is given already, that we may journey through your land to trade at midsummer _what we will, _and that thereafter you may travel back with us, _in our company of Telmarines_ to look in what place you think to find Narnian elephants. The bargain is made and _there is no more need for talk_."

And now the High King saw that he was trapped in his own words and his brother's. Hoom braced in case he should thrash and storm to be free, as the great bull elephants did, but the king did not.

Instead, his face stilled, and there came over it the hardness and the menace which had been on it when he spoke to the Galman.

"The bargain for the travel is made, and there is no more need for talk of that. But you will hear me on this: if these elephants, or any among those in Telmar or beyond, _are_ exiled Narnians, then the path _is_ open for them to return. All Narnians returning to our land are free to move as they will through Telmarine land, and _no Telmarine may stop them_. This is _not_ a bargain for trading; this is our decision and our decree."

He stopped, but his face said what remained unspoken; that if Telmar sought to hinder the return, there would be blood-spilling.

How that could be, Hoom did not know, but these had torn the land of Narnia from the hundred-years' invader, and from winter. Not an army - an army could not come unseen and could not climb the Great Cliff - but these were people of power. Still... how could lowland Narnians, or their new-come rulers ever know _where_ the elephants were, in Telmar, to herd them to a return? Decide and decree as they might, it would be a different matter to _do_.

Hoom nodded, as much for Gul as to the king; he could agree to this, and yet no ivory-bearer would leave Telmar. He spoke in unmoved tones, as if indifferent to the High King's word:

"We have heard. The Men of Telmar have heard."

**o-o-o-o-o**

Susan waited until Peter had gone to tell Lucy a story after supper before she broached the subject to Edmund.

"Did you believe them?"

"No. They're a lot cleverer than I thought. I think he was being absolutely accurate, but _not_ necessarily truthful. I think there are Narnian Elephants there, and that he knows it."

Her response was not so much a smile as a grin. "I thought so, too, Ed. This is horribly important business, getting exiles back, but it's sort of fun, too, isn't it, trying to spot the next move and blocking it?"

"I wish you'd blocked _me_! Or Pete, with his _trade as you will_. He's kicking himself now, you know."

"I know. But what's done is done, and no use crying over spilt milk. And we know where we stand, and I will be perfectly _lovely_ to them at the trade fair, and you can be the world's _best_ and most interested traveller when you go to Telmar. And between us we will get all the truth out of them, and get our exiles home again. If the Ravens find them, they can start home straight away. If they have to wait for you to come, well, it's only another ten months or so, and what's that compared to a hundred years? Anyway, we'll win this one, because we know one thing they don't."

"Which is?"

"Well, thanks to you and the royal brother _they_ think we're stupid - and _we_ know we're not!"

Peter stuck his head in at the door while they were still laughing.

"She's about ready to be put to bed, Su." Then, when she jumped up, still smiling, "Hold up a bit!"

She paused, waiting for whatever it was that he was fumbling to say.

"You know I was saying before, that... we're putting together a whole country here, and we need... whatever a country needs. There's so _much_." He looked at her, anxiously. "Su... we would have been a lot worse off without you today - I flubbed it, and you were really on the ball. Which made me think... would you be our whatever-it's-called in charge of dealing with other countries, especially the face-to-face stuff? I mean, we'd all work together, and get advice wherever we could, but you to be the one who really focusses on that. Would you?"

She looked at him, a little perplexed. "Of course! If the High King asks it of me, of course I will."

Relief flooded across his face. "You are a _brick_, sister and queen!"

"Foreign Secretary," said Ed. "That's what you call it."

"Whatever I'm called, it's not going to be _that_," said Susan, and left.

**o-o-o-o-o**

They had sent seven ravens to the west, northerly, southerly, fanning out across the sky, each sharp-eyed, glossy-feathered, intent on the task. Three came back from the closer settlements of the Telmarines, reporting that there were indeed elephants, that they had spied from the air, shackled, drooping elephants, kept singly beside rivers to haul on ferry-ropes, or two at a time, pacing in endless circles around and around great wooden capstans. We tried, the Ravens reported, but they would not answer us. They are not Elephants. From the great mountains of the south-west came similar reports, but this time of long trains of trudging beasts, hauling down from the more densely timbered hinterland vast logs, two wingspans wide. Crimtwing was uncertain - something about them, she thought, was Beast-like; she had seen before she came close that one of them had caressed and helped another, that they had worked together to ease their slavery. But she had not been able to get a single word from them.

"It is worse than we thought," King Peter said, bleakly. "We thought of exile, but this looks like slavery. It is possible that even if silent, they could be Narnians."

"Could they be silent from shame?" King Edmund asked.

"Why should _they_ be ashamed?" Queen Lucy demanded, furiously, and added, when he did not reply, "We have to send again. And we _have_ to get them out of slavery, if they're Narnians."

"We will do so, little sister," said the High King, looking across her head to his other sister. She did not speak, but her tightened mouth and fierce eyes were sign enough: _not one Narnian will be left enslaved_.

In the end, only one of the messengers, the one who had flown farthest west, came back with certain reports of Elephants. A mighty herd, he reported, and a free herd, led by a Matriarch of great wisdom and compassion, but of great age, such that she feared, as did the whole herd, that she could not make that hard journey.

"And such is their love for her, that they will not leave her, nor the other old Elephants, Majesty. But they will certainly come, they said."

"'_They said_'?" asked King Edmund, sharply

"Words come easy as breath, as they say, Your Majesty. I'm glad I found the Elephants you sought. But speaking of promises came easy to them I thought."

"More easily than...?"

The Raven clattered his beak, as if in acknowledgement of a hit. Sharp eyes met sharp eyes.

"I see," the King said. "Well, you must fly again to the west, and look for other herds. And this herd you have found - we will send again to them in the spring."

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: The mountain escarpment topography of Telmar is from the country Digory saw west of Narnia, in _The Magician's Nephew: _"...beyond the cliff [which marks the western border of Narnia] there are high green hills with forests. And beyond those there are higher ranges that look almost black... a wild country of steep hills and dark forests." (Something like Mount Roraima, Conan Doyle's Lost World, but stretching much longer, and with more mountains behind. :) )  
**

**I'd love to hear what you think; feedback on _anything_ (story, characters, geography, punctuation... ) would be _very_ welcome.**


	3. The Calormene Ambassador

_And... all the thanks as before! And noting as well, that not only did I not invent Narnia or any of the characters from C.S. Lewis's books, but that I have benefitted from many, many other fanfiction writers (and readers!) for ideas and encouragement.  
_

**o-o-o-o-o**

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Three: The Calormene Ambassador  
**

The long summer was ebbing when Tumnus brought word from Koreek that his people had encountered a ship a day out from Cair Paravel; it held, they heard, Tarkaan Neerzat, Ambassador of the Tisroc to the Northern Lands, on his way to establish diplomatic relations with Narnia. He found the High King with Queen Susan, and gave his message to both equally, then stood back, alert to be of assistance to either, in anything. He had not Windseer's great learning, nor the body-strength or skill of the guards and fighters, but what willingness could do, would be done.

The High King had seemed to tense, very slightly. "The first real one, real ambassador," he had said, glancing at the queen.

She was calm, of course.

"We'll manage... if we can manage a whole crew of traders, one after the other, we can manage a single Ambassador!"

"Yes. But that merchant from Calormen... it's pretty clear that they are a lot wealthier than we are. We can't let Narnia look bad, Su."

Her eyes had snapped. "It's not _going_ to!" Then, more softly, "Narnia _can't_ 'look bad'. It just has to look like itself. Leave it to Tumnus and me. We can have the formal reception in the Great Hall, anyway, and I'll manage for a fitting bedchamber for him, I promise. Him or her, I suppose. Any more than one will have to stay on board ship..."

_To Tumnus and me. _ The Faun closed his eyes for a moment, to better take in the wonder of that, that he was so trusted. What his willingness could do for these four, so young and weighed with such heavy burdens... He came to attention, glancing from one to the other, waiting for orders.

Her voice had trailed off, and her eyes were abstracted; she was obviously thinking, planning - but the High King was looking at him with an expression of sudden, pleased realisation.

"I know what you are, Tumnus!"

Well, his loyalty was given, boundlessly, but sometimes, there was mild amusement in the service as well. He smiled as he bowed.

"A Faun, Majesty?"

The High King was caught up in his realisation. "I've been wondering what it is that you do, what it's called, when you just make things happen when we've decided what we need, and I've got it! You're a majordomo! Or... would _Lord Chamberlain_ sound better, do you think?"

Well, let them call him as they would; no name or title could be of more value than to know he was so trusted. His amusement was lit by a rush of affection.

"As you please, Majesty."

The Queen came out of her thinking. "Oh, Master Tumnus! Do you think...?"

With great joy - astonished, even at the depth of his feeling - he readied himself to _make things happen_.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The first formal meeting was in the Great Hall, where the west wall, shimmering with peacock feathers, and the great vaulted ivory ceiling, and the east door to the open, majestic sea, all together made a background sufficient to impress any visitor, Peter hoped, with the wealth and stateliness of the Narnian court.

Even so, it was a little daunting to see the grandeur of the approach of His Excellency the Tarkaan Neerzat, and even a little daunting to hear the lengthy roll-call of his genealogy: "...second son of Ginrish Tarkaan, the son of Sudaraht Tarkaan, the son of Garaht Tarkaan married to Visareth Tarkheena, the child of Ilsombreh Tisroc, the son of Ardeeb Tisroc..."

Peter was glad to hear that his own formal titles, sounded in Windseer's grave and sonorous tones, had a dignity of their own - High King of Narnia, Emperor of the Lone Islands and Lord of Cair Paravel, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Lion - and even more glad that he had settled with Tumnus and Susan what additional title she should take to answer to her additional responsibilities. (_"Yes, the Witch stole it, Your Majesty, but it's a real Narnian title for all that..."; "Well, better than Foreign Secretary, anyway, I suppose."_) and most glad of all that the words seemed to be coming from his own lips in a way which matched the importance of the occasion, which carried him through until he could hand over to Susan.

"We are well pleased, Tarkaan, to hear from your master, the Tisroc, and commend you for your welcome and the good comfort of your embassage to our royal sister and queen, the Chatelaine of Cair Paravel and of the Realm, Queen Susan of the Horn."

And then Susan, amazingly transformed from the figure who had whirled through the Cair just a few hours earlier - arranging for a feast, whisking Lucy off for a bath (she was so _muddy_ these days!) fixing entertainments for the coming days, ransacking every one of their own chambers for cushions and curtains and bedding enough to contrive one lavish, opulent bedroom for their guest - had taken up the conversation, and managed almost the whole of the first formal exchanges, with a pomp and dignity which matched the Tarkaan's own, and matched the radiance and splendour of the Great Hall.

The welcoming feast was, by contrast, intended to convey that Narnia had the confidence to enjoy simplicity.

"The Great Hall for our formal meeting, Lord Ambassador," Susan had proclaimed, extending a hand graciously to lead the tall, elegant Tarkaan out into the open air, "and our silken beds for rest, but for convivial feasting, we bid you welcome to Narnia's own grassy land."

And the feast assembled from an outpouring of love and pride from their subjects made it a outdoor banquet greater than anything seen since their coronation feast. Great platters where a wealth of fruits of all seasons tumbled in luscious array, and dishes of savoury roasted vegetables piled high, their own juices mingling with the rich pressed oils of the roasting, and nutty breads hot from the baking, and piquant cheeses and fresh, bright aromatic herbs and the crispest of salads, and dulcet creams and curds and berries, and all the clear waters and juices and meads and wines of Narnia, from the sharp, cold, springwater of Attenon Vale to the rich, dark wine of the Centaurs.

It went well. The formal presentation of the Ambassador's credentials and the feast which had followed had both gone well, though there was palpable tension and discomfit among the Calormenes when they were faced with - and expected to accept as equals - Narnians as disparate in form as a Centaur, a Seal, a Wolf and a Toad. When it was over, Peter escorted his guest to the rooms Susan had designated, and saw the guards - Narnian and Calormene - settled either side of the door, and then trod quietly to the rooms she shared with Lucy. He knocked, very softly, and the door opened instantly.

No need for words; her triumphant grin answered his.

"No worse off, then?"

"_Very_ much better off, I think. Thanks, sister and queen, and Chatelaine."

"Thank me when they've gone. But so far, so good."

**o-o-o-o-o**

The following days were something like a very complex game of chess, combined with a never-ending school sports day, Edmund felt. In the name of entertainment the Ambassador was taken, along with his not inconsiderable entourage, on excursions by boat to Glasswater, and along the Great River, was invited to view - and to participate in - exhibition matches of swordsmanship and archery, and to be onlooker and judge at competitive feats of strength and speed. If there were still signs of his initial tight antagonism, and of visible unease with non-Human Narnians, nevertheless Neerzat Tarkaan retained his calm self-possession, and paid all courtesy, outwardly, to the monarchs and all other Narnians. It was several days of apparent good humour and gradual acquaintanceship, but all the time, it seemed to Edmund - and he conceded that the man was only doing his job - the Ambassador was noting, cataloguing, filing... and despising.

They were all quite certain now, that the spice merchant had reported to the Tisroc's court on the youth of Narnia's rulers, and on their scanty knowledge of the world around them - and on the impoverished state of the Cair Paravel court. Neerzat made frequent reference to the much greater wealth of Calormen, the towers and triumphs of Tashbaan, the might of her navies, the extent of her scholarship. The comparisons grew rather grating as days passed; deliberately so, Edmund felt, to test out how far Narnia could be persuaded to take the position of inferior nation to the great Calormene empire.

By the fourth day the condescension had become quite overt. The Tarkaan had joined them that morning, after breakfast in his own room, to walk under the garden colonnades where the last scanty purple blooms drooped and scattered colour on the pathway. The summer was passing, and Neerzat's sharp eyes seemed to note every thinness in greenery, every emptiness in the grounds before them. As they turned to go back, he looked about him and spoke, smilingly, but his words edged with disdain.

"What pleasure you have here, Queen Susan, in such _little_ gardens! How truly spoke that poet who said that better than all the glories of wealth and scholarship and conquest is the simplicity of a child at play. Narnia does well to rest content in its quiet corner."

An insult, barely disguised. Did this man - or his master, the Tisroc - think they could be stung or cowed by such? Susan was untroubled; Edmund saw a slight smile curving her lips and waited, intrigued, to see how his older sister would deal with this. But into the moment's pause came a tumble of words from his younger sister, forestalling whatever discreet snub Queen Susan had in store.

"I think so too, Tarkaan Neerzat! That's _wonderful_, that we both think that! So will you come with _me_ this afternoon, just you and me?"

Susan's eyes flickered, just a little, but smoothly, without hesitation, she followed her younger sister's lead.

"An excellent plan! We shall ensure the comfort of your followers with music and mirth, here, Your Excellency, while my royal sister, I'm sure, will show you joys that only she can show!"

Though the Ambassador had not seem to have _much_ enjoyed the excursion, Edmund thought gleefully, surveying the sorry, salt-encrusted, soggy-shod figure which limped back to the Cair that evening, and disappeared to enjoy the hot bath which the Queen Susan had caused to have ready.

Edmund went looking for his little sister.

"Where did you take him?" he asked, when he found her

"The rockpool way," she replied, composedly, not looking at him, but picking some of the seaweed from her bare, scratched legs. "and then the caves, like Kirrina showed me. I said I'd show him how we could dam up the streams that run down inside them, to make our own rockpools."

_Sometimes he thought his little sister..._

"And he said that they were the most _dammable_ streams he'd ever seen." She looked up then, her eyes glinting with a vindictive satisfaction.

_... was not nearly as artless as she seemed._

"_We_ fixed him; he won't try to make Susan feel bad again in a hurry."

_oh. _

**o-o-o-o-o**

But when the Ambassador came back down, bathed and scented and returned to his more elegant self, he seemed to hold no grudge. Indeed, that night he felt just a shade more relaxed, a shade more open to possible friendship, even, although he did not stay long from his bed.

"I'm almost sorry he's not sticking around longer. He's not all that much older than us," Edmund pondered when he spoke privately to his brother about it that night. "Early twenties? I'm guessing that for Calormen this is a pretty junior assignment, even if he is descended somewhere along the line from the Great God Tash."

"The more junior he is, the more he's just here, really, to gather information and make it plain to us how feeble we are compared to Calormen. He's not going to be a friend, Ed. A diplomat can't make friends." replied Peter warningly.

"No, I know. It's a pity. He never stops; he's always on the lookout for information. And I think he's convinced that we're just puppet rulers - that there's a _real_ power behind the throne somewhere."

"If he wants to fool himself, let him! It's not our business to bludgeon the truth into him when he's being too clever-clever to see it."

**o-o-o-o-o**

_A diplomat can't make friends_. Edmund mulled over those words as he watched the Tarkaan, at luncheon, on the next-to-last day of his visit. The man _had_ relaxed, somewhat. He had even, the day before, set his attendants and guards to demonstrating for his hosts the basic drills of Calormene sword-play, and had sat with the children as the strange curved swords flashed and spun in the air, and had clapped and smiled in what looked, for the first time, like genuine, heartfelt pleasure.

But still - he was always working, always fishing for information, and always believing that children could not be the real rulers of Narnia.

"How fortunate the land which can feast on the fruits of all seasons!" he exclaimed, towards the end of the meal. "Here in a land lately encased in winter ice I see the fruits of all seasons, before me - the fruits of autumn as well as those seasons called the time of gathering. Is it through ongoing incantation that this happy land has left winter to achieve all the seasons at once?" His tone was light, but his eyes darted quickly from face to face, searchingly.

"Not so. When we shook free of winter, indeed, our other seasons did erupt joyously and confusedly from the land," Susan returned, composedly, "but Windseer, here, tells us that our seasons are even now falling into the more steady rhythm of days, and summer is almost done."

"And Lord Windseer achieves this through his magic, as he defeated Winter?" The Tarkaan continued, blandly, and turned to select a peach.

"Tell us, Windseer," said Peter, nodding to the Centaur.

"Magic? I have none, Lord Ambassador, though some little learning. Narnia has rejoiced in the late victories, and in the visit of Aslan, treading this land, Narnia's own soil; so the land rejoices and the four seasons gave for a little while all their fruits and pleasures to him and to us. But already this long unsettled summertime, as it has seemed, is drawing to a close, and we will have autumn as the rest of the world does, and then winter, and then spring again, our first since the breaking of the winter."

"Sagacity in a counsellor strengthens even the weak," Neerzat observed, with a carefully courteous smile, "and the tribute of years is wisdom to the young. You have a wise teacher, Your Majesties, in Lord Windseer,"

"Not a teacher, but a valued counsellor indeed," Peter replied, then, to Edmund's surprise - he guessed it was a spur-of-the-moment decision - he added "he is one of those who sit on the Council of Seven, as is traditional in Narnia."

Neerzat's eyes flashed, and Edmund noted that he breathed more quickly, eagerly. The Centaur was less easily moved; a slight twitch in Windseer's haunch showed his surprise, but his face remained impassive; he gravely inclined his head in silent acknowledgment of the honour.

"Seven, you say, Your Majesty? and the others? I have been remiss in my Embassy not to pay my respects to these Councillors."

A quick, delicious, laugh covered Peter's hesitation. _Susan_. When had she learned to laugh like that?

"Be content, Lord Tarkaan! We will not inflict upon you all the names or the presence of _all_ our court officials in one day or one visit, _especially_ as so few are in the Human shape favoured in Calormen!" the Queen teased, and the Ambassador smiled and gestured a sign of chivalrous surrender to her, apparently accepting that he could not insist on being told the names, and perhaps also abashed at having his unease with Narnian diversity made so public.

Chivalrous surrender or no, though, he continued: "Then if not those names, Majesty, might I learn from him or from you the name of the one who commanded the magic or the armies which broke the power of the Winter?"

"As to the army, I commanded," said Peter shortly. Neerzat Tarkaan looked politely disbelieving. "As to the greater power, it is a tale most heart-held by all of us here, and not to be lightly told as an after-dinner tale. When we have lived longer with you, and learned to know you better, we may share it with you as the most precious gift Narnia has for Calormen."

"Then even as your gracious sister-queen has said, I must be content with what I have learned of Narnia in these few short days," Neerzat Tarkaan replied, "And if we speak of gifts, Your Majesties, I will command to be brought from our ship tomorrow a gift I have brought from Calormen, which I hold as returning to Narnia a great treasure."

He might speak of being content, Edmund thought, but his eyes told that he was far from that - and why leave the gift of "a great treasure" to the very end of an embassy? Peter and the girls, though, looked all happy anticipation, and the luncheon ended in apparent cordiality.

**o-o-o-o-o**

That night began the formal leave-taking. Once again, they were in the Great Hall, and once again they were in full formal regalia, with light armour, and carrying the Gifts, to pay compliment to Neerzat Tarkaan, the son of many Tarkaans, and through him to the great political and economic power which was the Tisroc's empire.

The formal speeches, the proper courtesies, and thereafter, a night of gentle and gracious entertainment - six Fauns played flutes, as arranged by Tumnus, and various small treasures and gifts were displayed to add lustre to the night.

Neerzat Tarkaan seemed to have moved on from finding the guardedness of his hosts irksome. He was complimentary about the pleasures of the night, the soft sea air and the company, conversing easily, if still a trifle patronisingly, about Narnian music and art.

"This piece, for example," he murmured, glancing at the casket so recently and so gladly received back into Narnia. "Very lovely."

"It was a gift from Telmar," replied Susan.

"Indeed? I wonder what odd chain of events led to such an exquisite work being in the hands of savages?"

He stooped, and picked up the casket from the low table where it lay, and looked at it keenly, turning it over and scanning it from every angle, then looked at Queen Susan and smiled with true appreciation.

"I congratulate you, Majesty, that such an ancient piece of your much-diminished patrimony has returned to your land. How truly speaks the poet who says that heritage is more than blood, and the gift of our forefathers is the gift of spirit, not body."

"The Tarkaan is well informed, it seems," Edmund cut in, carefully "since he is aware that this is a Narnian work, and not Telmarine."

The Ambassador laughed, apparently in genuine amusement. "Not Telmarine, certainly! But it is only my own eyes which have informed me that the work is Narnian."

"Your Excellence knows old silver?"

"Old silver and old ivory, yes. I have collected it, and this is indeed a choice piece. We have such ivory work in Tashbaan, as well, and the chroniclers tell us of the great raids in which Narnian ivory was won from those huge beasts. Ah! how hunting-field became battle-field where the tusks were torn in fury from the great jaws of the dying!" Then, with quick, congratulatory courtesy: "They did not fall easily, King Peter. The tales are still told of the valour of those beasts, how not one stooped to accept the mercy of the Tisroc, but fought on till they died. Even their last words, as the tusks were torn from their jaws, were words of defiance."

"T..torn from their jaws?" Susan exclaimed, and looked quickly to see where Lucy was, a little distance away, close to the Fauns, and deep in chat with a little dark Naiad. "You ...your people in ancient times _killed_ our Talking Elephants for ivory?"

"Indeed!" He bowed, cheerfully and unselfconsciously. "Ah, they were great days! One day I must ask to hear how they are remembered by Narnian poets! Great hunts, great battles. It is long since Calormen went to war, with beast or man. Though," with a quick, arch smile, "it is not for an Ambassador to regret the rolling drums of war. We must learn to love the little flutes of peace." And he smiled warmly, glancing towards the small group of musicians.

"Your people..." Edmund spoke clearly and calmly. "...they made war on Narnians to take their ivory?"

The Ambassador glanced back, and spoke in simple surprise. "But how else? Narnian ivory was highly prized."

Queen Susan did not speak; Edmund thought that she was now literally breathless in her shock. The Ambassador in turn seemed taken aback; her face clearly showed repulsion. He spoke, beginning in simple puzzlement, and moving in the space of a few words to indignation.

"The Queen must surely know that to get ivory one must kill the beast?"

Then, glancing from face to face of the three rulers near him, "But this is a strange unhappiness you show, Majesties, and a strange manner - to talk of war to the representative of the Tisroc, _may he live forever_!"

"To hear of the murder of our people, however long ago, must of course move us," the High King observed dispassionately. "And the Tisroc's representative first spoke of old wars here in this hall."

"It is so," replied the Tarkaan sharply. "But it was not I who first spoke the dangerous word _murder_. How truly the poet has said, puissant lord, that he who points one finger of accusation outward, must of necessity point also back at himself. Did not your own country also kill, to take this ivory from _your people_?"

There was a moment's startled silence.

"No?" The brief show of visible anger was masked over now; he lifted his eyebrows in an appearance of delicate enquiry. "Her Majesty's hunting horn..." His quick, clever eyes flicked maliciously to the Gift at Susan's side. "Was _it_ not taken from a Narnian beast, a _talking beast, _Queen Susan? And how gained, if not through blood? Such trophies of the hunt were as common as trophies of war in the days when those animals roamed closer to the haunts of Men."

"I .. I don't think so. Not from a Narnian Elephant."

"Indeed?" with a weight of scornful disbelief in the word, "It is a very fine piece, older even than this box, and to me it seems certainly Narnian..." he shrugged, and looked away pointedly, as if abandoning a delicate topic. "And this wonderful ceiling - how many tusks it must have taken to furnish forth such a roof! But of course I cannot see at this distance what the source of _that_ ivory could be."

He smiled, in a well-schooled appearance of diplomatic amiability, but Edmund could see that the brief moment of openness - or of any real desire for friendship - had passed.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"So, everyone, tomorrow morning, just be very calm. Leave it entirely to Su and me. All right? Lu?"

"Kill them? They _kill_ them?"

"They _did_, a long time ago." Edmund interposed. " He was talking about ancient times, and he'd never been in battles with Elephants himself. He didn't realise how we felt about it."

She brushed him aside. "He's as horrible as...I should have said Kirrina could _drown_ him! Peter, we _have_ to get back the Elephants, to keep them safe."

"We're doing it, little sister. The Ravens have been out and back again; we're gradually getting a map together of where they are, where they're held. We'll get them back."

"It's a pity," Edmund said slowly. "He was... when he was talking about the ivory and the battles, for pretty much the first time I felt he was just being himself, showing what he really liked, and I almost liked him... But it had to be that what he liked was something like that."

"He can't even see anything _wrong_ with killing Beasts to make stupid, pretty things. It is exactly the same as the ... _Susan!_ Why don't you say something? You can see it?"

"Of course I see it. But it's so late. I... really need to go to bed. Tomorrow he can give us whatever his vile gift is, and he'll go."

"We don't _want_ his horrible gift..."

"Can we leave it? I really, _really_ can't take much more."

And, coming from Susan, that was so unexpected that it stopped all further talk of the Calormene.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Edmund caught up with her in the long corridor.

"Su... Su, wait up."

"What? I mean... what is it?" She kept her face turned away.

"It's... I know what you're thinking, and I don't think it would be that way."

"_What_ am I thinking?" she hissed, darting a quick glance sideways.

"What he said." Edmund looked dogged, angry and concerned, all at once. "Honestly, Su, I know that I wasn't there, and so what would I know? but I'm pretty sure... I'm pretty _sure_ that anything Father Christmas gave you would be all right."

She found that her throat had tightened so much that she could not speak, could hardly swallow. She was... She turned her back on him again, very quickly, clenching her fists.

"Go away, Ed," she managed, and after a moment's hesitating, he did.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The final farewells, the delivery of the parchment scroll of carefully-drafted greetings to the Tisroc, and intimations of a return ambassadorial visit within the year.

It was nearly over. Lucy stood stony-faced and unmoving. Peter was High King, and he had called for the most perfect demeanour at this last leave-taking, and so she choked down her still-seething need to _do_ something - for the long-dead victims of the Tisroc's ivory-gathering wars, for the remaining Elephants in the far west, possibly still in danger, even for the ordinary elephants seen by the ravens, chained, elsewhere in Telmar. All the wrongs and the cruelties churned inside her, and demanded action.

But Peter was High King, and loyalty demanded that she stand stiffly through this last leavetaking, and so she did.

She thought that Susan surely was feeling the same. She was pale, and had dropped her light, teasing manner to the Ambassador. She spoke, and nodded graciously, but - Lucy looked hard at her. It was as if she were just a puppet, not her real self. She was _making_ her body do what it had to, but she seemed not really there at all.

Peter - she admired with her whole heart his amazing strength and steadiness. He was able to do what she could not, and think widely for the whole of Narnia, seeing not only the needs close at hand, but also things more distant, and more distant in time as well. She watched him as he put into the Ambassador's hands their missive, and tried to make her own expression resemble his calm receptivity as the Ambassador in turn began to speak, to explain what was in the three great chests brought down from the ship.

"... For is not a people's greatest treasure its wisdom?" he was saying, "Therefore our Tisroc, may he live forever, trusting that Your Majesties would esteem matters even as he has himself, and knowing that Narnia is fallen so greatly from its former glories..." Lucy hoped her face was as smooth and clear as Peter's. "...has sent to you as the gift most suited to Your Majesties' glorious restoration of your land, books from his own library, books which are from Narnia's own past, books written and printed here in Narnia, and today brought back to you!"

"A noble gift!"

_Edmund. _He shouldn't have spoken. "Leave the speaking to me and Su," Peter had said, and they had all agreed. And after a slap like that, about _fallen from former glories_ - but he hadn't meant to, she was sure of that - just that he wanted archives so badly. And they could trust Peter to not be rattled. He was speaking now.

"As my brother says, this is a noble gift and one we value highly, to have returned to us this heritage, the learning and writings of our past. We will send our thanks with you to the Tisroc, our valued fellow-sovereign, for this well-chosen gift."

The Ambassador bowed, but his mouth had tightened at that word "fellow-sovereign". Lucy felt the beginnings of a smile, inside; Neerzat Tarkaan didn't seem to like that the king of a little country could call the Tisroc of a mighty country "fellow-sovereign". _Too bad! _But the speaking was still going on.

It was the Tarkaan again:- "I will gladly convey your thanks to the Tisroc, may he live forever. These books - since Narnia has also fallen greatly from its days of high learning - are indeed carefully chosen to be most suitable for you, books, that is to say, for _children_."

Neerzat Tarkaan looked now with plain hostility, his eyes sweeping along the line of the four of them, and Lucy felt a little shock, even after the revelations of last night. He looked straight at her, and he was so strange, suddenly, so changed from the man who had floundered with her, that day, in and out of the rockpools, and then blundering through the stream in Kirrina's cave.

"_Simple_ books, Majesties, since it is reported that you have _so very much to learn_."

Lucy felt her mouth drop open, and saw that Ed had lifted his head to reply; Peter seemed too angry to speak, but - _oh, Susan!_ - Queen Susan's clear voice broke the silence; her icy calm seemed untouched by the barely-disguised insults, and her words were as clear and hard as crystal.

"Well may the Tisroc have valued Narnian books for children, since the wisdom of Narnian children with "much to learn" has proved greater than that of great enchantments, Ambassador, and I think has puzzled _you_ more than a little, this visit. Tell your master the Tisroc that he has only to ask, if he should wish to learn from children like these. We will be glad to teach."

An insult for an insult.

She and he stared at each other, cool and hard. A long moment dragged out, and then Peter re-took control.

"And so your visit comes to an end, Ambassador Neerzat. Lord Windseer and the Lord Chamberlain will escort you to your ship, and see you safe on your way to your master. May the winds prove favourable to you, and your reception in Tashbaan be all that you might hope. Farewell."

And then in utter silence they received, unmoving, the Ambassador's final punctilious bow, and the first formal visit of a foreign Ambassador was over.

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: The description of the Great Hall of Cair Paravel is taken from Chapter 18 of **_**The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe**_**.**

**I would really like to hear how readers are feeling about the story, so if you can find the time, please drop a review!**


	4. A Winter's Tale

_As previously, thanks and respect to C.S. Lewis, and to the many, many other fanfiction writers (and readers!) whose ideas and encouragement have helped me to get this far.  
_

**o-o-o-o-o**

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Four: A Winter's Tale**

The four of them stood alone and watched as Koreek's people towed the ship out from the wharf, watched as her sails rattled down, fanning to catch the wind, watched as she swung out past Koreek's Rock and set away to the south.

"Is she going to Archenland, I wonder?" Peter said. "They handle her very well. We should think about boat-building ourselves."

No-one replied. He shook himself and came back from the huge open window of the Great Hall.

"Well... thoughts, anyone? I've got something to say, myself, but first, let's hear from the rest of you."

"That was really strange," Edmund said. "He knew all week that he had that insult in store, and he was laughing and showing us Calormene sword-play..."

"It wasn't exactly _his_ insult, though, Ed. It's what I was saying to you before - he's just a messenger of the Tisroc."

"Yes. But how weird it would be, to be being one thing and at the same time being another. Because he nearly _could_ have been friends with us."

"_Friends_ with someone who thinks it was great days when they _killed_ Elephants...? You said he talked about it like it was some big heroic..."

"One thing at a time, Lu. Can we stick to that insult-business? Su, you..."

Susan interrupted him. "Can we leave here and go somewhere _quieter_?"

**o-o-o-o-o**

Back in their own private rooms, he began again.

"That books-for-children business. Susan, I thought I could handle anything, but that threw me. You were brilliant, stepping in like that. You were so much a _queen_ - you just rolled right over his attempt at an insult. Thank you."

She shrugged. She seemed to have retreated back into the quiet dreariness which had been her mood all morning, and was standing beside the table, her eyes fixed on the plaited reed mat on it.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. Just tired. I'm glad I could help, though."

"Well, that's what I had to say. That I'm grateful and proud of you, proud of everyone, but especially of you. So... how was it from your end, sister and queen?"

"We did all right. Thanks everyone, for not fussing about all your bedding going. And..." There was a ghost of her usual smile on her lips. "Lu, thanks for sticking up for me that day. I don't think I needed it, but it was just _gorgeous_ to feel you being so furious for me."

Lucy, cross-legged on the floor, elbows on knees, her chin cupped in her hands, replied with her own brilliant smile.

"I loved it! And it served him right! And thank you for letting me - and not treating me like a baby."

Susan's smile strengthened, and warmed. "I don't think I could have stopped you, could I? But I knew I could trust my little sister; after all, she's _not_ a baby, she's a queen!"

"I _am!_" Gladness and delight flashed between them, warmth and trust. _Susan. Lucy._

Peter let the moment pass, and then pulled back attention to the matter in hand. "Ed? Anything to say about the whole visit?"

"The books. I know I should have kept my mouth shut, and I won't make that mistake again, Pete, but - _three_ chests of books!"

"I'm glad you've got them, but he was trying to use them to insult us, and the whole of Narnia, and we have to ..."

" I couldn't give a tuppenny damn for what he was _trying_ to do - it's what he's _actually_ done..._books_, Pete! It's like getting back exiled Narnians, to get back some of what's been lost."

"There is that. There's bound to be some useful knowledge in there, especially if he's put in schoolbooks."

"_School-_books!"

All of her siblings had to laugh at the disgust in Lucy's voice, and it was Susan who suggested they break up the conference for the time being, and turn to becoming a working bee, to remove all traces of the Ambassador's visit, and restore all bedding to its rightful home, so they would all sleep well that night.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The days and weeks following were quiet, subdued. The intense, anxious days of entertaining and the strain of trying so hard to make it all seem effortless had tired them all; the gentle decline of the season towards autumn suited the mood of the Cair.

They found occupation in different places. Peter spent much time with his General - and in discussion with all the more experienced members of and leaders of the little army. There were rumours, it seemed, of unpleasant happenings to the north and north-west, small, but disturbing.

"We must expect to be attacked, eventually" said the General, bluntly. "Our neighbours will test our borders. We need to see every merchant or Ambassador as a military scout, now, Sire."

The High King nodded. "There will be no more merchants until summer. The Calormene Ambassador spoke of a return visit, but nothing is arranged. In any case, they would have to approach by sea, as would Galma, and I think our defences against an attack from the sea are sound, at least through the winter. Could there be any attack by land?"

"Certainly, but I do not look for that before spring at the earliest. Spring and summer, Your Majesty, the times of gathering."

"Of harvest?"

"Of armies. But for now, we can spend our time training, strengthening, surveying."

But even these preparations to repel attack were quiet ones, with long considerations of deployments, supply lines, potential divisions of strength, as well as the inevitable practice of skills and manoeuvres.

Queen Susan and King Edmund took part in some of the consultations, especially to contribute and to glean what knowledge they could of the nations surrounding Narnia, and of Narnia's own resources. ("The Tisroc was too canny to send anything in the way of map-books," Edward lamented, "Nor politics, either.").

Apart from these discussions, and from daily practice, they saw little of each other in their days; while the High King made his preparations, Queen Susan was busy in organising the Cair, and riding out to assess and become familiar with the agricultural capacities of the nation, and King Edmund in patient sorting, reading, cataloguing of the Tisroc's gift.

Lucy alone found much time for pleasure; she seemed to be trying to make the most of the shortening hours of daylight, and slipped away often to play with her new friend, who was, as Edmund had suspected, the little dark being who had been present that night in the Great Hall.

"I invited her, of course," Lucy said in answer to his questions, and to Susan: "She's _Kirrina_, that's all. Well, her real name's longer, but she says I can call her that."

Her older siblings did not press too hard for a _real name_; it was a relief and a gladness to them that there were now only Narnians around them, and that Lucy's deep turmoil and upset at the revelations of their various visitors from elsewhere seemed soothed by her having a playmate, even if it was one who saw her return to the Cair so often with damp, torn clothes, and sundry scratches and bruises.

And for all that their days were spent apart, at evening they would gather in their own sitting-room, a place to meet and to reconnect as just the four of them, if they so chose, though from time to time they invited others.

The Beavers came, and brought with them a welcome contribution to the meal - home-smoked salmon, and a dark, rich cakey-textured malt bread, which Mrs Beaver said was an old family recipe. ("And a blessing it is, my dears, to be able to make it again - and with malt from Murmuring Valley barley! Take my advice: you get yourselves a cook who knows what Murmuring Valley malt can do, and you'll do nicely.") Once little bright Kirrina came, but slipped away before nightfall. She had proved a water-creature indeed, if not quite like the Naiads of the Great River. She was little, quick-moving and glinting-eyed; she laughed often, looking sideways at Lucy, who seemed enchanted with her, and joined in the laughter even when the jokes were not clear. Mr Tumnus came, and that evening the convivial tea turned into something closer to a working meeting, as they gradually pieced together the Song of the Council. ("It's not really a _song_, though is it?" "We _call_ it a song, Majesty.") It seemed that the Seven should include male and female, single and pair-bonded, and those who went by earth and air and water. ("And ones not bounded, too, Majesties." "Not bounded by what?" "Oh... dying, for one thing...")

But most evenings were spent with just the four by themselves; the staff of the Cair - there were more staff, now, mostly as decided and recruited by Susan and the Lord Chamberlain, with sharp, perceptive suggestions from Mrs and Mr Beaver - kept clear of these sessions, to allow them the precious time they needed together.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Autumn wore away, and there began to be a sharpness in the air. Two-thirds of the army was stood down, on the General's advice, in preparation for a return to home quarters over winter. Lucy reported that Kirrina had hinted that she would be less present as playmate in the winter. Edmund had sorted his way through two of the chests and was well into the third.

"I should have kept them to amuse myself with over winter," he commented to Susan one day, having met her, unexpectedly, as he was bringing back an armful of the unsorted manuscripts.

She was standing quietly in a corner of the west corridor, looking down to the practice-grounds. She did not turn around, but leaned her forehead against the cool stone column surrounds of the window.

"Winter. Yes. Lucy's already started to talk about it. She's ...oh Ed... getting excited about maybe Christmas, and maybe seeing Father Christmas again."

He moved suddenly and awkwardly, clutching at the more slippery of his armful of papers, and rough-bound folios. "Oh. Are you... would you be all right about that?"

"If I have to be, I can be. But... I'm dreading it either way."

"Well... me too. I'm not looking forward to meeting him, if he comes, to hearing what he might have to say." A folder slithered out from his grip; he pinned it to the wall with one knee.

She leaned her head lower against the stone. "I'm a _pig_, Ed - right now I'm glad you didn't get a Gift, because who else could I talk to about this?"

"Su, first up, you're _not_ a pig, and second... those Gifts for you three were... _are!_... a huge honour and ... for respect for you. You are _absolutely_ all right, and there _can't_ be anything wrong with them."

"It's not just about the Gifts, it's _me_." She turned then; her face was very pale and bleakly unhappy. "Ed, I'm as bad as the Telmarines. I _knew_ about ivory, about elephants, but I just didn't _connect_ it. Or I didn't want to know, and so I wouldn't let myself _see_."

"You're nothing like them - not that we know all that much about them anyway. Look here - if we do see Father Christmas again, just ask him straight. He respects you and he'll tell you." He shifted the armful to one side, and now a few did slither to the floor. "And as far as what Neerzat said, remember: he was just trying his _damnedest_ to get us rattled."

"Oh, Ed! When did you get so wise?"

"I learnt a lot about how bullies work," then, in response to her quick sorrowful glance, "at that school. They'll say anything to get you off-balance."

"Well," she swallowed twice, and paused before she spoke again, "he managed!"

He gave her a quick one-armed hug. She smiled, briefly, then pulled away.

"You won't tell the others? I don't want to spoil anything for them."

"You know I won't."

**o-o-o-o-o**

There came the great day when Tumnus, having racked his own memory, and badgered every long-memoried beast he knew for additional verses, was able to announce, triumphantly, that he had the complete Song of the Council. It became clear that "not bounded by dying" was meant literally; the first council had been attended by a River-God - by _the_ River-God of the Great River, they imagined - and that every Council for centuries thereafter had held at least one member who was immortal.

"Well, that'll have to wait," said Peter. "We don't know any immortals. At least, I suppose Aslan is, but we could hardly ask him to be on a Council."

"Let be, Your Majesty," said Windseer gravely. "When time is right you will know who and what the immortals are."

"What about this other one, the Oak? Is it always an Oak?"

The Oak of the First Council had been, they were told, not bounded by maleness or femaleness, having both male and female in one being, and that similarly, one not bounded in gender was needed on each Council.

"Surely not so, Majesty. To have one kind, whether Oak or Holly or Centaur or Beaver or Eagle or any other kind, _always_ represented would unbalance the Council, not immediately, but over many years."

"Then we need to think more, to discover who else might be not bounded by maleness or femaleness. I haven't a clue."

"The Council, I believe, and my viewing of the stars leads me to believe, will form gradually as you understand your needs. Have no fear but that Your Majesties will see the Councillors as you need to see them, Majesty."

"I can see right now," Susan remarked. "If it's a bonded pair we're needing, I can't think how we could do better than the Beavers. They have seen so much... and they give such plain, good..." She stopped, and looked down at the table. "To me they meet our needs right now."

"Good for you, Su! I have _no_ idea why we didn't see it before!" said Peter. "Everyone agreed?"

And as winter began to bite the land again, the Beavers were installed on the Council, and though only three members were yet appointed, the first meeting of the first Council since the Winter was held in the newly-cleared room which was designated as the Grand Council Chamber.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"They give such plain, good..." _comfort_. Mrs Beaver - both of them - said little that went beyond everyday and practical matters, but they saw much, and gave much, over the early winter days.

They brought a puzzle of their own, though. The Four received a deputation as the rivers began to freeze, from Naiads, Toads, Marshwiggles, and the Great Turtle, asking for an assurance that the Beavers would not be held to fill the place on the Council reserved for water-dwellers. Shortly after came a deputation from the Bears, Giants, Dryads, and Dwarfs requesting similarly, that the Beavers not be defined as land-dwellers.

"I am _tearing my hair out_!", Peter said, as he and Lucy shook the snow off their cloaks, and unstrapped their snowshoes, in the entry to the beaver lodge. "I never imagined there could be _politicking_ about it, not between Narnians. Can you tell us which you are, for good and all?"

"Well, deary, it's always been like that, what with us being betwixt and between, as you might say," said Mrs Beaver comfortably. "_We_ don't mind. _We_ know what we are, and we don't much mind what folk call us."

"You take my advice, and tell'em both, tell the lot of 'em, that you're not calling us one or the other till the whole Council's filled," said Mr Beaver, pointing the stem of his pipe in Peter's direction, "and then they'll see what we are, by what places are left. Are you stopping for tea? It'll be a good'un, and I'd see you back safe to the Cair."

** o-o-o-o-o**

It was late in the afternoon, one day nearly at the shortest day of winter, when Ed cannoned out of the Library, steadied himself by grabbing Lucy, and gasped, "Where's Susan?"

"In the kitchens, with Cook, I think. What's up?"

"Ah... oh... a _story_! I want to tell you all a story! Tonight, just us four, all right?"

"Well, it's all right by me! What about? Is it from your books?"

"Yes! And...Elephants! It's about _Elephants_." He grinned at her wildly, added "Oh, get a good fire going, will you? So we can have it in the warm?" and dashed away, calling for the others.

**o-o-o-o-o**

They were all gathered, comfortably, fed with Cook's good dinner, warmed by Lucy's fire and ready for the tale. Edmund jostled his unwieldy bundle of paper into order, and looked up alertly.

"There's a cover note - do you want that, too?"

"Might as well," said Peter, settling himself down with his head on a folded jacket, as the closest thing to a pillow available. Edmund sat up, with his back against the creamy stone column on one side of the fireplace, and began:

_Faunus to Atramentus. How strange it seems to me, old friend, to be writing to you under such a name, but times are such that even a scholar, such as myself, may feel disquiet at writing to one engaged in making public their research, and hence I conceal both my name and yours. I fear that the Power in the land (better no names) may at any minute crush your noble trade, and ransack your files to see who may be her next Victim._

_This, indeed, is not a scholarly work, being merely a collection of old tales (you know my long interest in the ways of folklore) intended for this generation now, alas, rising to maturity in a Narnia which is not as it was in the Times of which the tales tell. Friend, while this work may seem trivial to you, I beg you to use your utmost powers to see it through your Presses, and into the hands of those for whom I intend it. It seems to me that she is intent on not merely destroying our land, its society, its economy, and all who might possibly sit on its Throne, but even on destroying the very memory of what Narnia once was, to reduce the minds of our people no less than their bodies to being her Slaves and Tools. Therefore, even such a light-seeming Work as this may play, and I trust will play, its part in keeping the knowledge of Narnian heroism alive, and thus inspire even such as my young T. to work for its restoration._

_Friend, if in your estimation, this cannot be, and you dare not endanger your livelihood, and I may say, alas, your very life, then I beg you to see the Book into safe hands elsewhere. The Galmans are still trading with us, intermittently, and could perhaps carry it Oversea to safety, or, failing that, Calormen is a nation which, whatever their ancient enmity to us (and as you know, my life's work has been to disentangle that Tale, separating the Real from the Unreal) values Learning, and will not lightly destroy any manuscript, especially one coming from our, alas, increasingly isolated Land. _

_All letters now must end as if they were the last between friends, and so, friend of my youth, A's grace go with you, and may you tread the dance to its Great End! _

_Faunus._

_I reopen this bundle to add: Words cannot express how great a debt I owe to you for all your help in getting my works to the light of day, and now this last. A. be with you!_

"Presses! I didn't know that Narnia ran to that sort of thing," Peter murmured, with his eyes shut.

"Yes, think of Mrs Beaver's sewing machine; that's trickier than a printing press, I'd be pretty sure. And..." Susan leaned forward and poked the fire, sending up a little shower of sparks, then continued. "I'm thinking that the Witch's rule sent this country back a good few years in all sorts of things."

"Mr Tumnus had books," Lucy contributed. "Printed books."

"Well, this one doesn't seem to have got printed. It's just the manuscript. It's big, but the story I want is in the middle... hang on..." They waited in silence while Edmund found his place, and began to read again.

**o-o-o-o-o**

From: **A Book of Heroickal Deeds, for Young Narnians**

In the days of Queen Nerrina, Daughter of the River, and true child of King Frank's line, one cousin of her line, and knight of Narnia, Edret the Wanderer, sought adventure far beyond the borders of Narnia, far from the Tree of Protection, in the northern mountains, for the Queen had heard strange things of changes there, of changes to the Dwarfs and their ways, of changes to the Beasts, and wished to know the truth of it, and whether there was import in it all for the realm of Narnia.

And those changes were indeed of great import: a Witch (for mark you, young Narnians, that this present Trouble is not the first which has battered our land, and always has Narnia held strong and triumphed, in time) had for purposes of her own (and that tale is too dark for young ears, but when you are older, and times are, we trust, better, it shall be told to you) taught to the Dwarfs of Iron Hill the art of making from the rocks there a metal stronger than any other, and to wreak that metal into many shapes and uses, as hammers, doorframes, cooking-pots and the like.

And at first the noble Edret was greatly charmed with this art, and besought the Dwarfs to teach it to him, that he might teach it to the Dwarfs of Narnia, for he saw that Iron could be used to make great hammers, to strike stone apart for house-building, and for ploughshares more enduring than those of wood, and could bring great good to Narnia. (Moreover, he believed that the line of Frank had family tales from the days of Frank and Helen, that those great ones had told of this art, though they themselves had it not.) And the Dwarfs agreed to teach it to him, though they said that there was a price to be paid for the learning, and that price was to lie in a house of their devising one night, and then go where he pleased and as he might.

This price seemed a low one to Edret, and he agreed gladly to it, only rejoicing that the Dwarfs of Iron Hill held to the traditions of Narnian Dwarfs, to offer hospitality to strangers so freely, and all that summer he dwelt with the Dwarfs, and learnt the art of making and working Iron. Then, as the chills of winter began to blow upon the northern mountains, he began to think him of returning to Narnia, to his cousin, Queen Nerrina, and the pleasant court of Cair Paravel. But the Dwarfs reminded him of his promise, to lie one night in a house of their devising, and moreover averred that he could not leave without drinking deep with them, carousing before they parted.

And so good Edret drank with them, late into the night, and whether the drink was enchanted I cannot say, but when he woke, Edret found himself straitly imprisoned in an iron cage, set deep into the living rock of Iron Hill, and no sign or trace of any Dwarf nearby. And it came upon him that this cage was the house of their devising, and that they had imprisoned him, not meaning him ever to leave, for their own amusement, and to keep their arts (which, indeed, was not their art, but had been taught them by the Witch) for their own secret.

Three days and nights did Edret languish in that cage, not seeing any soul, Dwarf, Beast or Bird, and bitterly did he think that he would perish there, of starvation or of cold, and not ever return to the fair courts of his cousin the Queen. But on the fourth morning, he awoke to see beside the cage the Witch, seated on a boulder as on a throne, her burning eyes fixed on him, and in them only bitterness and death. He told her of the Dwarfs, and the bargain he had made, and besought her, with courteous words, to let him out, but she laughed, and told him that it was she who had bid her Slaves to make the cage, and set it in the rock, and to so contrive that there was no door to that cage, that whoever was so imprisoned must infallibly starve or perish from the cold, unless she sent food and warmth.

And he was silent, for he saw that he was indeed at her mercy, and he did not choose to beg for it.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"I thought that this was a story about _Elephants_," Lucy interrupted.

"It is! Or one Elephant, anyway. Keep listening; the Elephant won't be long now."

Lucy resettled herself, and the reading continued.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Long she played with her captive, letting him dwindle and pine for many days, almost to the point of death, and then sending scanty food enough, or food not fit for Narnians, and letting her minions jeer at him as he fell upon it, marking how far he had fallen from his former strength and courtliness. And he for his part, set his teeth to endure their jeering, holding fast to the knowledge that he was a Narnian, and no slave, however much her oppression grated upon him, and he set himself to endure the cold and the scanty provisions as long as might be, to protect and cherish his own life as something not owed to the Dwarfs, nor to the Witch, but as Aslan's own gift to him, a gift not to be yielded to an enemy, or lightly let drop as of no consequence.

So matters continued. But one day a Falcon, Sharpscry, ventured into those high mountain skies, for she loved the cold north, and from far overhead saw what was about, and flew straightway to Cair Paravel, and a long and weary flight it was, to take the word to the Queen. Then did the Queen, urgent to see this Narnian free from durance, confer hastily with her Council, seeking advice from them.

To go so far from the Tree of Protection, and into lands controlled by a Witch, was rash, but the Queen was adamant that a Narnian imprisoned was her responsibility, and therefore she would if needs be go herself to confront the Witch, and see her subject freed. But her Council prevailed on her to stay, saying that it were wiser, far, to send two of its own, secretly, to free Edret. And the two who were chosen to go were the Winterfather, who sat on the Council then as the Immortal, and the Elephant Mnaerundundra, who gave counsel there as coming from the Earth-dwellers, and with them Sharpscry, who had brought the word of Edret's captivity to the Queen.

Winterfather, who has many names, is he whose coming we look for in winter. (It has been nine years and more, now, that he has not been to Narnia, but I hope that you, little readers, will see him again before long, when our troubles have eased.) He is a bringer of gladness in dark times, and sorely needed now, and also moves with ease in deep snows, and so was wisely chosen to make the winter journey to the northern mountains. Mnaerundundra was mighty in strength, and in endurance, and had many times before left the boundaries of Narnia to wander in the Western Wild, seeking the mothers and young of his kind, and was chosen for his courage to go far, and Sharspscry was chosen to show the way, and also to spy out when the Witch and her Dwarf-slaves were away, to free Edret, if it might be, in their absence.

So Sharpscry flew again, the long weary way from the eastern sea to the northern mountains, beating the air high above her two companions, and they followed far below, the Winterfather riding high on Mnaerundundra's swaying, solid back. It was a hard journey, but at last came the day when Sharpscry dropped, like a thunderbolt for suddenness, to say that they were near the place where the iron cage was sunk into the rock, and that they must stay until it could be certain that the Witch and her dwarfs were gone. "For this is my task," she said, "to see and to spy the right time and place for your action." And she rose up high, and circled the mountain on slow-beating wings night and day, until she saw the path was clear.

Two days they waited, until Sharpscry gave the signal, and then with swift, deliberate pace Mnaerundundra bore Winterfather to the cage in the rock. And there they found Edret, perished almost to the point of death, unable even to know that friends had come.

"This is my task," said the Winterfather. "Bars and bolts make no difference to me." And he passed into the cage, and knelt down by Edret, and raised him gently to rest against his knee, and poured into his mouth something from a small flask, which brought life flowing back through the veins, and spoke to him words of heart and hope, which brought strength back into his face, and gladness. But still the cage was imprisoned in the rock.

Then stood forth Nmaerundundra. "This is my task," he said, and wrapping his mighty trunk around the bars of the iron cage, he pulled with all the strength that was in him, such mighty strength as was never seen in Narnian before or since, as he would heave the very mountain from its roots. And slowly, and then with a rush, so that mighty Nmaerundundra staggered back, he wrested the iron cage from the living rock, and set it in the open air.

But still, Edret was imprisoned in the cage, though the cage was now free from the rock, for the cage had no door, and was made of iron bars, not to be easily broken.

Then Sharpscry dropped again from the height and whispered harshly that they had no time to delay, for the Witch was coming.

"Then, though I am stronger to pull than to break, this also must be my task," said Nmaerundundra, and setting his great feet on the cage to hold it down, he put one great tusk through between its bars, and twisted his head, to try to lever apart the bars, so that Edret could escape. And the bars yielded, a little, a little.

"Leave this," said the Winterfather, "for the Witch is close. You are strong and can carry cage and all to Narnia, and there we can free our good knight at leisure."

But Nmaerundundra would not hear, and heaved again against the iron bars, and they yielded a little more, and Edret measured himself against the gap and pushed and struggled against the bars. Sharpscry stooped low once more, and cried, "Fly! Fly!" and was away.

Nmaerundundra gave one last mighty strain - and the bars yielded. But at the same moment, there was a terrible crack! across the mountain air, and lo! Nmaerundundra's tusk had broken, close up to his cheek, and that great-hearted Beast was plunging and stamping in his pain, bellowing low, half-stifled moans, trying valiantly to choke down, to make soundless, his deep-throated anguish.

Thus their sorrow and danger stood deathly high, with Nmaerundundra half-mad with pain, and Edret still too weak to help himself. In that desperate moment, the Winterfather moved, swift as lightning. He boosted Sir Edret up onto Nmaerundundra's back, and then stooped and caught up the broken tusk, and leapt himself, up behind Edret, and held him close, keeping both of them safe on that perilous perch. Leaning low, he called into one broad flapping ear, called words of cheer and encouragement, and great-hearted Nmaerundundra had never been nobler than that moment, when he set aside his pain of body and mind, and heeding Winterfather's words plunged headlong down the mountain track, following the sky-path shown by Sharpscry, heading away, away to the south, to the east, and away far, far from the Witch's domain.

But when, after many days they found themselves back in Narnia, where the Queen waited to meet them by Caldron Pool, to meet them and pay them homage, Nmaerundundra turned his great head aside, and would not look at any Narnian, much less at his Queen, for, he said, "I am not whole; tusks are the honour and glory of an Elephant, and without them I am no longer what I was. My strength is spent and my spirit is broken with my tusk. So how can I look on my Queen, and what now can I offer, to be her Counsellor?"

"Nay," said the Queen, and her voice was sweet as sweet water to a thirsty soul, "your tusk was broken in saving one of our own Narnians, and as you would have given it to save any one of us, it is counted as if you had saved every one of us. Nmaerundundra, your name will live forever in Narnia, and your broken tusk will hang on my wall at Cair Paravel as one of Narnia's greatest treasures."

And Nmaerundundra the Great-hearted raised his head a little, but still with a doubt in his eye.

Then the Winterfather laughed his great glad laugh, so that the very sound of it was heart and cheer to all those who stood around, and he said, "Nay, Queen, this is _my_ task. For I have brought away the tusk of the Great-hearted not to gather dust on the walls of Cair Paravel, but to be remade.

"You say truly that it will be one of this land's greatest treasures! It will be so, a royal treasure, and for a Queen, but not this Queen. This tusk will be remade, if the Great-hearted will so give it, to make a Horn, which another shall sound, and when it is sounded then help will come as surely as the Great-hearted brought help to Caged Edret. And this higher part of the tusk will be remade, if it is so given, into a quiver to hold arrows to be used in protection and to save in desperate circumstance, as we were protected and saved by the Great-hearted in his thundering charge away from danger - and I think the arrows from that quiver will not lightly miss.

"Nmaerundundra, Great-hearted, will you so give your broken tusk, won with great pain, to me for this? For whether this Gift can be made and given to one yet to come, one of great heart and courage, with great tasks to accomplish, hangs all on your giving it now."

And Nmaerundundra raised his head, and trumpeted aloud that he so gave his tusk, and so the Tusk was given, and the Winterfather has taken it, but where it has gone we do not know, though we know this, that it will come forth to be given to one yet to come, when the time is right, to save Narnia as Caged Edret was saved, by the great heart and great courage of one whose name will never die, Nmaerundundra, the Elephant.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Edmund paused, struggling a little to get his voice back on an even note.

"And that's it, Su... everyone. That's the story I wanted you to hear. It wasn't hunted, it was _given_. And it was _always_ meant..."

His voice broke again, and he pushed the bundle of manuscript away, angrily, blindly, brushing at his face.

There was a sudden rush, and Susan, somehow without even getting up, had managed to fling herself across from where she had been lying back against the little hassock to where Edmund was sitting, and was hugging him, fiercely, and saying in urgent, passionate tones, "Oh, Ed. Oh, Ed. Oh, ...thank you... _thank you._"

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

** A/N:** Oak trees,like many other trees, are monoecious; each plant bears both male and female flowers. Beavers have been variously defined under various old taxonomies in medieval and renaissance times, sometimes as animal and sometimes as fish; most famously, they were defined as fish in seventeenth-century Canada for the purpose of establishing what foods could be eaten in Lent. _Canadian Journal of industry, science and art_, Vol. 4, 1859, p.386.)

I have been updating more or less weekly for the first four chapters of this, but now I need to take a short break; I hope my next update will be in about two weeks, but I can't be certain.

As always - thank you for reading! And as always, I'd really like to hear how this went.


	5. Summertime, and secrets

_As mentioned earlier, I owe a great deal to other fanfiction writers, as well as to the much-appreciated C.S. Lewis; this chapter especially uses materials and ideas lifted from cofax, in her story 'Carpetbaggers' ( s/7231695/1/Carpetbaggers) and rthstewart, in her story 'I love not man the less but nature more' ( s/7362985/1/I-love-not-man-the-less-but-nature-mor e) and elsewhere. Thank you both for your generosity, as well as for your stories! _

_ **Editing to add: **I have tried several times to correct the drifting final "e" in the link to rthstewart's story, but ffnet will not accept the correction; there should, of course, be no gap between the "r" and the "e" in "more".  
_

**o-o-o-o-o**

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Five: Summertime, and secrets  
**

It was Diamond, the oldest of the Ravens, who proved the most valuable in the business of drawing up the map of Telmar's territory, and of possible Elephant locations. Her eyes were not as sharp, nor her wings as strong, as those of the younger Birds, but her keen intelligence and incisive, darting questions brought out detail that might have otherwise slipped away unnoticed. Edmund worked very closely with her, painstakingly drawing and redrawing with thin charcoal on wooden desk-top and table-top alternately, after each journey, more and more surely, more and more precisely.

Each time the king had finished anew, all seven Ravens were called in to consider the map, and fierce, quick debates and challenges often broke out among them. Then Diamond would intervene again, questioning and leading them into logical deduction, with quick perception of possible contradictions and also possible resolutions, so that the quarrelling unkindness (as they sharply called themselves in such disputes) resolved into precise, useful analysis and description. The king was fascinated by the whole process; he did not take part in the debates, but watched, and learned a great deal. He taught himself much, as well, in the plain act of the map-drawing, and came to enjoy this attempt to pin down knowledge in clear, black outline. As the sketches became more and more detailed and useable, he grew flushed, excited and not a little grimy over the work.

"This is something like! We can make our _own_ maps!" he exclaimed to Tumnus one day, his eyes shining. "Doesn't matter tuppence that the Tisroc didn't give us any. We can make them - _and_ our own records and archives."

The Faun looked up, with a quick, understanding smile, from the newly-built shelves where Edmund had arranged the books and papers from the Tisroc.

"I can see you love it, Sire! I wish you'd known my father; you'd have got on well with him. He loved the whole business of archives and map-making, too. He was very literary." His face was shadowed again, briefly; then he closed his eyes and opened them, very quickly, as if dismissing an unwelcome train of thought. "And _that_ means - remembering those people he used to know and work with - that I know who I can ask, to find who might be willing to draw up this map for us, permanently."

The copyist turned out to be Scriptor Sordon, an iron-grey Iguana who seemed to take a sardonic, critical view of Faun and King and Ravens alike. He worked quickly and silently for the most part, glancing rapidly back and forth to the desktop as he drew the map in silverpoint on parchment, and then carefully and deftly inked in the outlines and added notes and keys where most useful. It was huge advance on the charcoal-on-table method, though parchment was not as easily got as charcoal, and the lines not so quickly erased and redrawn; Edmund experimented with it himself, though without immediate success. ("It can scraped for reuse, Sire," Sordon said, dryly. "When I get back from Telmar..." the king had replied, unabashed, and ambitious to try again.)

He had, however, determined very early that he would carry no map at all, save in his head, the better to appear to the Telmarines as innocent, non-threatening and trusting. He commandeered two of the younger Ravens, Crimtwing and Sallowpad, to drill him and check his memory on every point, all through the spring and early summer, until he and they were absolutely certain that no matter where he might find himself in Telmar territory, he could find his way back at least to the escarpment. They drilled him too, on the fixed points where slave-elephants might be found, and the movements, as far as they could ascertain them, of the trains of chained elephants moving timber for Telmarines, and of the free herds they had observed.

"But we can't see it all, Sire. There is thick forest cover, and there's stray Elephants, too; the big males seem to wander away from the rest. We can't tell where they'll go."

"Plus," Crimtwing hopped excitedly, "Diamond says that the General says we should seem like the simple birds of Telmar, and not get too low or too close."

Edmund nodded. "Yes. I have spoken about this with the High King. He thinks it best if none of the nations around know that any of you air-folk can think or speak with us. Keep it as a Narnian secret."

Sallowpad's beak clattered, and Crimtwing hopped a little, further, sideways, and nearly tottered off the table, righting herself with a little flutter.

"Secrets!" she said to Sallowpad. "Kings and Generals...!"

Their eyes gleamed.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Hello, Lu. Come to join the work-party?"

Lucy looked sceptically at her two older siblings. Peter and Susan were lying in the sun, on the open grassy ground below the northern walls of Cair Paravel, overlooking the sea.

"You don't _look_ like a work-party!"

Peter grinned, lazily.

"Su's filling me in on the details of this fair of hers."

"Of ours," said Susan, with her eyes shut.

"Of ours."

"Will we be on the stalls ourselves?" Lucy asked. "Will it be things to eat? Or things we could make?"

"I don't expect so. It's not a _market_, little sister; it's more or less what we had last summer, when the merchants were coming in, telling us what they had to offer, showing us samples and trying to make a start on trade between our countries."

"Except _this_ time," Susan said, with cheerful satisfaction, "I've got all of them to come at once, and got quite a few Narnians to come as well to show what we've got to offer, too - things _they_ make, Lu! It gives us _all_ a chance to see what's possible; then after _that_ the trading might happen just in the ordinary way, with... I don't know, wagons coming from Archenland, or ships from Calormen..." She stopped suddenly.

"Su's been telling me how she's going to set it out, what's going where. You can stop and listen, if you like."

"No, I'm going down the rocks to play with Kirrina."

"Been to the end of her cave yet?"

Lucy's desire to explore the whole depth of Kirrina's cave, as well as all the rivers and all the seashore had been well shared with her family.

"Not yet," Lucy said. "There's a pool in it, but we haven't gone all the way back. I think it's sort of a secret. She says she won't show me now, because I'm younger than her. She says when I'm as old as she is, she'll show me."

"But if she's... what?... a year or so older than you now, round about?... she'll always be a year older, you goose!" said Susan, sitting up to say it.

Lucy stopped short to think about it, disconcerted; Peter reached over and patted her foot, cheeringly and consolingly.

"Let her keep her secrets, Lu. She'll tell you when she's good and ready."

"Well..." Lucy shot back, with reviving confidence. "she told me another bit of her long name, anyway! She says Kirrina is short for Kirrinakgurruna. But it goes on more than that."

"Good for her! and good for you, too. Have fun!"

"Yes, we will!" and she left them, heading down to the shore.

"I love Narnian names!" Susan said, lying back against the grass again. "they all feel so full of the _person_!"

"Don't know what person _that_ name's full of! She's a funny little thing, that Kirrina. I never know quite what to make of her. I think maybe she's older than she looks."

"I expect you're right. But I love that she plays with Lucy, and I love that she keeps her safe, not letting her go to the very ends of the cave. And playing with her, with someone so _Narnian_, is ... it feels to me like, anyway... Lucy's way of getting close to Narnia, like we did, and I'm so _glad_ for her!"

Gladness - for Lucy, and for being part of Narnia, and for Narnia itself - seemed to thrum between them and through them, seemed to coil in the air and become part of the wonderfully complex scents of early summer at Cair Paravel: moist earth and sweet sun-warmed grasses and, blowing in from the harbour, the salty tang of the sea.

They lay for a few minutes, just breathing Narnia; then Peter rolled over and poked one finger at Susan's shoulder.

"So... back to this work-party. You've paced it all out with Tumnus...?"

"Yes, and Windseer... to make sure we had enough turn-around room for everyone," she added.

"Good thinking. And you're going to leave everyone to make their own actual trade arrangements?"

"Oh yes! For a start, I don't know how much actual goods will be brought, and how much it will be just samples, and then people placing orders, so I'll pretty much leave them to it. But I _will_ ensure that _nothing_'s traded in or through Narnia that hurts _any_ of our people."

She had sat up again by now - they both had - and she clenched her fists and stared down at the single pier, small, but sturdy against the dancing waters. He hesitated, then spoke with difficulty.

"I wish ... Su, I _wish_ I hadn't said the Telmarines could bring what they liked to this trade fair."

Her face gentled suddenly, hard determination melting into understanding.

"I know. But the Ravens said there're dumb elephants as well as our own in Telmar; hang on to that. You shouldn't jump to thinking horrible things."

"Yes. Edmund says the same as you, that we shouldn't be quick to jump to any assumption. But I know it was a blunder; I can't back out of the first agreement we have ever made with Telmarines, and I can't let Narnia take any... _any_ part at all, in a trade in body-parts of slaughtered Elephants... if it _is_ that. And we don't _know_, so I'm in a cleft stick."

"For now. But we are doing as much as we can, as quickly as we can, to get this clear, one way or the other. And Edmund will find our own Elephants, and bring them home."

"Another blunder. It should have been me."

"You've already got your work cut out for you with sorting out the business in the north-west."

He grimaced acknowledgement. "What must be, must. I'll stay to see your Trade Fair well started and then we're away."

"Thanks for that! I'm...pretty excited about it actually; it's a great chance to form relationships, mend relationships a little maybe, and to show the world that Narnia is well recovered from the Winter - and perhaps also, just a _little_ bit, when you and the General and the patrol set out, to show that we can and will defend our borders and our people."

"My canny sister!"

"Oh, trade fairs aren't just about trade! Even the casualness of it, with you all leaving in the middle of the fair, on a routine patrol of the border - that'll get a message across." She nodded with satisfaction. "And as for Ed: I know he's young; I know it's a huge ask for him, and for us too, to trust him with it, but look at what we've been trusted with ourselves. Who are we to stand in the way of him doing something great for Narnia?"

He looked at her curiously. "It sounds so un-you to say that! You used to take everything on; I mean, it used to feel as if you and I had to be in charge and looking after those two..."

She covered her face with her hands, laughing. "Oh, yes! That was me! Sorry about that!"

"Well... we still do have to, though."

She showed her face again, still smiling, but more serious. "Yes. But they've looked after me a couple of times too. Remember Lu's stunt with Neerzat?

He rolled his eyes. "Only too clearly! The way she was talking, he was lucky not to be drowned outright!"

"Hhmmm... I think that was more the fierce little friend's idea! But what I meant was: that was her looking out for me. And Edmund has too, quite a bit. Looking after's a two-way street. They're growing as much as we are."

He nodded. "They are. But I still wish I could do the Telmar trip myself. I didn't handle the Telmarines well, before, and I think that's made it harder for him, and it will be hard enough, going alone among devious people, to try to win back our own Elephants, from amongst theirs."

"Yes; I was thinking about that. I think it might make things a bit easier for his trip if we make something of them when they come, have a more personal relationship with them than with the other traders. After all, they will be hosting him for... _weeks_, I expect. I think we should meet them when they come, not all of them, but Hoom, if he's leading, or whoever, and have more conversational time with them."

"All of us?"

"Actually, no. Not Lucy. She's very wound up about them; she's convinced that they're murdering Narnians. We both know she'd be heroic about not saying anything if you asked her, but I can't see that there's any reason to make her go though a meeting with them, given how much it would upset her."

"Agreed. So you, me and Edmund?"

"You and me to start with, anyway; you're High King, and I'm running the Trade Fair. Maybe after that, you and Edmund. It won't be hard; just to set up friendly relations with them, that's all."

**o-o-o-o-o**

Two dozen men, twelve couple, each pair joined, fore and aft, by a long sling hanging from a harness bound to the shoulders of the men, and, swinging in the slings, tusks, each weighing nearly the weight of a man. Twelve tusks, the treasure of years, held by two and three and four generations, waiting for the Winter to melt from Narnia and for the trade to open again.

Hoom looked intently at each tusk as they passed. Good solid ivory, cherished for years, oiled and polished and wrapped in woollen cloth as fine-woven as could be made, and when unwrapped and displayed, glowing with a warm glow of life, bright as the moon, but warm as a sleeping child. Each pair a known pair, whose tale could be told - _was_ told, around the night-fires of Telmar. The tusks of Grundurran, of the Grey Forest Mother, of Tipbroke, Lanky and Many-wiles and last, and greatest, of Hoom the Old - twelve tusks cherished for years and now at last being brought to market.

The most precious tusks - long, heavy and a flawless cream in colour - came last in the line, as of right. Hoom fell into stride beside them, reaching out sideways as he walked, to rest his hand lightly on the dense, solid smoothness, though covered now from the sun - the tusks of Hoom the Old, after whom he himself had been named.

He had heard the tale many times, of how his own great-grandfather had led the hunt, and had died in dealing by weighty iron mallet the last death-blow, the last of the six men to die that day. This wealth was wealth hard-won, and wealth to be shared with many. To dig the pit, to drive the beasts: these were not light tasks, and much was owed to the families of those who had joined in that work; much more, then, to those who had joined to face the rage of the great one, with knives, and the few precious iron spears, and the many fire-hardened sharpened wooden ones. The wealth had been won, and treasured for many years; now at last it was to be traded, and debts repaid with honour.

It had been years now since the hunt; Capun then had said that he would not have, any longer, any risking of lives of Telmarines when the Narnian Winter meant no market lay open for the ivory. Capturing of infant elephants for work continued, yes, cutting them off from the herd, and taking them to captivity and labour; but that was not the hunt of tusk-bearers, and not the way to honour. And there had been no trade, and old knives broke and could not be reforged, and spears had snapped in the hide of elephants who had escaped, and been lost in the forest, and axe-heads chipped and cracked, and stranger-Narnians sneered at forest-ways - _how do you live? how can you trade?_ they had asked.

But now the way lay open, and wealth was within reach again; frozen Narnia no longer blocked the way east. Even the hunts might begin again, and honour and names be made again through battle, if Capun now decreed so.

The thought of the uncanny eastern child-kings and their grasping claims came to him - the greedy baseless claims of those who did not know elephants, and had never hunted them. So let them claim! They had strange power, true, to melt away the Winter, but they had not seen and did not know the strengths or the secrets of the Men of Telmar. They scorned Telmar because Telmar had no great stone buildings, and no kings, but they would find that Telmar's men could hold strong to what was their own, and make the trade-ways work for them. The child-kings could not block this year's trade, at least; these tusks would ransom Telmar from being simple forest-people scorned by easterners, and bring them again the wealth and strength of iron.

Hoom the Man strode alongside the tusks of Hoom the Old, and dreamed of what was to come.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The late morning heat beat down on the stone quay along the waterfront, and on the ships tied up, unloading; on the anchored ships waiting their turn at the small pier, and on the whole crowded, shouting wharf.

The wharf... not much more than the quay itself, really, thought the High King, with a single pier, but new-furbished with good solid stanchions for the ships to tie up to, and looking surely more impressive than last summer, when last foreign visitors had tied up there. Narnia _was_ progressing. He felt a small ripple of pride. The noise and the heat and confusion were strange , and the influx of Humans was _very_ strange after that very Narnian spring, but it all signalled a growing and potentially prospering state.

Last summer just one ship from Calormen had seemed to take all the wharf's resources; today sailors from Galma, Terebinth, Archenland and Calormen rolled barrels, carried great bundles wrapped in coarse canvas, or passed things hand to hand along the pier to the shore, and Water-rats scuttled about, in amongst the foreign sailors, catching ropes, coiling them, tying and untying as six ships jostled to move in and then away again from the pier, to lie at anchor in the harbour. The two large Seals stationed at each end of the pier for the most part lay back and observed, directing operations, but intervening when needed. Once, the general bustle was interrupted by a cheer of derision for a Terebinthian sailor, who found himself nudged sharply sideways and into the water when he attempted to untie a Galman vessel to make way for his own; he was carried to shore between two smaller Seals, who had been lurking unseen, assigned by Koreek for just such a need.

Koreek himself did not add to the cacophony; he was a commanding presence throughout, yes, but commanded without great noise. He stood erect in the water, a little out from the end of the pier, surveying the scene with fierce eyes, and conveying his commands only through low grunts, or by occasional sharp slaps on the water, or perhaps in underwater commands heard by his fellow-seals alone.

The High King, looking down from the higher ground where the Fair was setting up, nodded to himself, appreciatively. Command and control without confusion or bellowing: it had been an excellent appointment.

He turned to speak to his sister, only to find that she had left his side; she was discussing some matter with Master Tumnus, back on the edge of the little village of tents, booths and trestles, taking shape on the grassy level between the hill of the Cair and the wharf below.

A village where nation would mix with nation. Susan had decided that goods should not be displayed in national blocks, but located by type. Spaces had been marked out, lanes and rows for different types of goods, the Narnian alongside their visitors, and they were beginning to fill. Narnian felted goods already were displayed on trestles, and close by were intricate Archenlandish weaves, and the soft, fluid cloth they wove from goat's hair, and then a blank trestle, where perhaps Calormene silks might appear, or good Narnian linen. In a different alley, silver from Pattering Hill, or copper from Archenland, maybe - or less precious goods, perhaps - a wagon was even now rumbling in from the Murmuring valley, laden with small sacks barricaded in by a row of casks, well-secured against the jolting of the roads. The village was taking shape; order was beginning to appear in the confusion.

But _only_ beginning. The fair's official opening was just hours away, and for now the upheaval was almost bewildering. He would leave his sister to enjoy the chaos, he thought. Though to her it was not chaos, of course; to her, he reminded himself, it was simply the raw material which she would turn, re-form, manipulate and make another extraordinary event unfold precisely as planned.

But she was turning now, and moving rapidly back towards him, her face, and whole bearing, alive with exhilaration; she seemed eager to speak, and he waited, smiling, for her to be close enough for her to tell him her news.

"Peter! The Telmarines...they've stopped for lunch a league away, so we've got about an hour before they get here!" Then, in answer to his unspoken question: "Sallowpad. We set up a code. So... time to get cool and ready to welcome them officially? Meet at the west gate just before they get here? Can do?"

He was suddenly immensely tickled by the sight of his usually cool, controlled sister so carried away by the zest of her work.

"Of _course_ I can. _Since_ it's the high and mighty Chatelaine of Narnia asking it of me!"

"Just plain Chatelaine will do!" she grinned. "Thanks, Peter. See you after I've sorted this lot out."

He left her to it.

**o-o-o-o-o**

In the event, it had been harder than he thought to offer a warm, courteous greeting to one who might have murdered Narnians - might have barbarously mutilated their bodies - and now might be trying to make vile profit from their tormented death.

In the event, the best he could manage at first was simply the man's name.

"Hoom."

The Telmarine had tensed; his eyes were hard.

"Your Majesty."

And it had fallen to Susan to add the graciousness, the words which carried them over that awkward beginning, and into a seemingly-friendly inspection of the booths and alleys of the fair.

The Telmarine group had brought with them several tusks; a light enough load for the two dozen or so men carrying them, Peter thought, and little enough to trade with. Still, they were settled into the place set for them, and their leaders - a younger man than Gul was introduced as second to Hoom this time, a dark-eyed, reed-thin youth named Rezmar - were apparently pleased with their welcome. They acquiesced in the proposal to walk with the kings - Edmund had joined the group as Queen Susan had bade them good-day - to survey the last setting-up of the fair.

They began with the aisles closest to the Cair. Most booths were set up now, and they worked their way unhurriedly through the entire fair, through a thickening crowd of all nationalities: Terebinthians, Calormenes, Narnians, Archenlanders, a few hesitant Galmans, islanders from farther east, who came claiming fealty to the Narnian throne, and even a few adventurers from the far southern enclave of Teebeth, who came as passengers in a Lone Islands boat, with lumps of yellow amber in their packs.

Amber and ivory and Archenlandish turquoise, the Galman trinkets of pearl and coral set on fine wires, and silverwork from Pattering Hill, and Galman woodwork with mother-of-pearl inlay all lay along the first rich laneway. Another was given to foodstuffs - barrels of salted fish, sacks of malt, nuts and dried fruits, and wines and oils and ciders and spices - Narnia had been able, after all, to put out a good sampling there, the king noted. Calormen's main display was there, too, with all the aromatic goods they had shown a year before; they seemed to have brought little else, though their reputation for culture and learning was perhaps evident in a small display, in yet another aisle, of materials for writing or painting; inks and pigments and brushes and inkstones. (Interesting, the High King thought; Susan had evidently been right that a trade fair was also a chance to present a nation's strengths; trade and diplomatic manoeuvering went hand in hand.)

The two kings steered the two Telmarines along the aisles, past cloth goods (no Calormene silk,after all; they had probably assessed, correctly, that there was not the wealth in Narnia to buy it, yet), and plant products, where both Narnian flax and Archenland tobacco were attracting much attention); metal goods, but no war-goods, by his own decree, on advice from the General. (The High King could still hear her dry summation: "Only two peoples in all the world know the secret of drawing iron from the rock, Sire, much less the secret of steel. And while Calormen can smelt steel, it is nothing as fine as our Dwarfs make; therefore..." _Therefore..._ he had issued his decree.)

Still, if there were no swords or armour on show, there were fine hunting-knives; and the sidelong, fascinated glances of his guests, their tentative touching of the razor-edged blue steel seemed to show the truth of the General's words. King Edmund was talking with both Hoom and Rezmar now, casually picking up and comparing the different edges, handles, weights; their attention was all on the younger king, and on the blades, and the High King took the opportunity to study his guests. Was it in contrast to the youth and slenderness of Rezmar, the High King wondered, that Hoom seemed broader now than he had a year back, and seemed to walk more confidently - or perhaps arrogantly? He and his brother had come as suppliants last summer, but had manoeuvred deftly in negotiations; perhaps Hoom felt the time for humility had passed? Still, the youthfulness of Rezmar boded well for Edmund's journey; as a younger man, there was more chance that he could be companionable at least.

They moved on. There was only one more aisle to see, now, the northernmost, where sample slabs of green marble gleamed alongside the sterner basalt and fragile alabaster, and here actual trade was taking place, it seemed, or at least preliminary discussions, between Calormene and Archenlander.

It was growing late in the afternoon. Peter gathered together his party with one silent, compelling glance, and began to lead them back to where the temporary dais had been erected. Centaur-trumpeters were making their way there, too, from the Cair gate, and a small crowd was beginning to gather around it, and an air of expectancy was rising. There were no wood-people present, and very few Beasts - trade of this sort did not in the main appeal to Beasts, and those present were mostly Mice and Squirrels, with one lone Bear - but mingling with the Humans from across the known world were many Dwarfs, several Fauns, two Marshwiggles (what had they brought to trade, he wondered? or had they come to buy?) and, seated up against the hill of the Cair, the Giant, Rumblebuffin, staring down at the bright array below him. Even, on the other side of the crowd, closest to the searocks, he could see Lucy and Kirrina, drawn from play evidently, by the excitement of the gathering, and talking ardently together, shining fair head against shining peat-brown, Lucy pointing urgently to someone or something along one of the aisles closer to the Cair's walls.

And now the Lord Chamberlain was standing at the foot of the short flight of steps, looking expectantly past the trumpeters, who were preparing to sound a fanfare. The Queen was approaching. It was time for the fair to begin.

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: A little longer than I hoped, for this update, but less than three weeks, anyway! I'll be trying to manage an update every two weeks from now on. **

**And, as always, thank you for reading, and I hope you're enjoying the story (and if so, I'd like to hear about it, about which aspects, especially :) and if _not_, I'd _still_ like to hear! :) about what _didn't_ work, and where you found it went wrong).**


	6. Departures

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Six: Departures**

**She had done well. **Without doubt the first Narnian Trade Fair - possibly the first trade fair anywhere in the known world, the High King reflected - was well launched. The crowd was sharp-eyed and business-focussed, certainly, but also cheerful and positive; the crowd, and the Fair were surely taking Narnia one more step towards a secure future, dealing peaceably with all the countries around.

Including Telmar. The afternoon's work had not been easy, though Susan had carried him through the first awkwardness, and after that he had not had to say too much, since they all had been occupied sufficiently in inspecting the various precious or strange goods of the Fair. (Why had Terebinthia brought _resin_? he wondered, and tubs of black tar? Who could they imagine would want to buy such?) Then, too, as High King he had had the additional duty of encouraging and supporting all his subjects, including those from far corners of Narnia, and of ensuring scrupulous courtesy to all other visitors, so in the end it had been Edmund who had carried the weight of filling the air with words for these burdensome guests. Surely now they might disengage from the encounter?

A glance at Edmund confirmed his willingness to bring an end to the afternoon's laborious civilities; Peter turned with a stiff politeness to Hoom.

"It is time to rest and refresh ourselves, Master Hoom. You will wish to be with your fellows, and to engage in the business of the Fair, I know, but perhaps two nights hence you will meet us again, when we may talk at more leisure of your journey here, and my brother's journey back with you. I will send word on that night."

The two Telmarines bowed acquiescence, and with a sense of relief Peter watched them melt away back to where most of their fellows sat guard by the shipment of ivory - two magnificent tusks were at the booth, but the others remained in their slings, where the Telmarines had set up camp, further away.

Edmund's eyebrow was quirked in what his brother recognised as amusement, but he only murmured, so low as only to be heard by the High King, "Oh, _most_ kingly, royal brother! Were you _suggesting_ or _decreeing_ what our foreign guests should do?"

Peter frowned. At least Edmund had learned some discretion, not to say it aloud, in this mixed crowd.

"We can leave further talk until we are back..." he was beginning, when they were interrupted by the approach of a small party of women and men , carrying between them three sacks, and all very clearly both excited and anxious about their business.

"Your Majesties! Your... " the speaker seemed overwhelmed by whatever their occasion was. He stopped dead, and stood breathing quickly, eyes fixed on the High King.

Peter put aside, with regret, the thoughts of rest and privacy - these foreigners were also part of Narnia's future, whether as allies or...

"Welcome, friends," he said.

A woman pushed forward from among them, her gaze fixed on him in an uncomfortably worshipful manner.

"Not _friends_, Sire! Sire.." She, too, seemed excited almost beyond bearing, but also almost afraid. "...loyal _subjects_, Sire! We dared not hope that this day..." the tears stood in her eyes. "We are your loyal subjects... forgive us that..."

The first speaker, eyes glancing quickly and nervously from king to king, and then to the three sacks, took up her tale. "Lord King... true heir of Gale, who stood between us and disaster... We have _tried_... we've gathered every nut we could, these last two years, since we heard that the Winter... " He broke off.

Peter glanced urgently to Edmund. Who were these people? But Edmund, if not at his ease, precisely, seemed to have found the clue he needed to speak.

"People of the Lone Islands!" he began. "My brother is greatly moved to see you here! The thought of your loyalty so far away is both a joy and a precious gift to us."

So Edmund, too, the High King noted wryly, could be kingly in speech when occasion required - though it was still uncertain how exactly he had guessed that these people were Lone Islanders.

"Majesties! The tribute... " and again the speaker seemed racked by anxiety, " Sire, Sire! It is so small. Forgive us! The trees on Felimath are so few now... Sire, we have delayed this year and more, wanting to gather a fitting tribute for Narnia's protection, but truly, Majesties, we have brought all we could find... the trees are so few now... "

Peter had the measure now; Edmund's hints and the delegation's own words made it plain what was about. He extended his arms to them in welcome, as his brother stepped a little back.

"Good Islanders! Felimath's tribute is precious to us, as sign of your faith-keeping..."

"Doorn, Avra" was murmured low behind him, and he continued smoothly, "... no less than that of Avra and Doorn. But it is our joy as it is our duty to so work that life in your Islands is one of peace, of well-being, not of anxiety to gather tribute! If to gather the nuts is now a hardship to you, can you imagine that your king..."

"Emperor" came the barely-audible voice.

"... and Emperor would wish such to continue?" They were looking at him now with a mixture of awe and tremulous hope. He felt a quick surge of misgiving: how could he be to these people what they seemed to think he was? But that was Aslan's commission, and he had no right to turn from it. He pushed ahead.

"We will talk later of this matter of tribute, or if time does not allow before I must be about the business of protecting other of my subjects far from here, my gracious sister the Chatelaine of the Realm, and my good brother King Edmund will so unravel your difficulties that you need fear no more. But for now... these three sacks will be borne to our..." He hesitated... _to our kitchen? to our storerooms?_ He was unsure what great virtue was in the nuts that made them seem, to the Islanders at least, worth the pains of gathering and bringing many leagues by sea. "to our Great Hall," he finished, "that we may all Four know that you have brought them to us."

It was clearly very much the right thing to say. Their faces brightened, and murmurs of "_the Great Hall_" passed between them.

"_Friends_... and dear subjects," he went on, thinking rapidly as he spoke, "we have much afoot now, to deal with those visitors who are not our own subjects, but we bid you, if you may stay the little extra time, to join the Queens, who will wish to meet all our subjects after the Fair's end. The King Edmund and I, unhappily, must turn to sterner duties, but we will look to see you at some later time."

"Will your Majesties visit us at the Lone Islands?" asked one of the delegation, with gathering confidence. "The heirs of Gale have many times voyaged to us, and ever been welcomed with all loyalty."

A voyage? Peter, on the verge of dismissing the group, found his attention suddenly caught by new possibilities.

"Indeed, we wish that very much, though the art of boat-building has slipped during the long Winter." Even the Cair Paravel harbour, even Glasswater, had been ice-locked through those years. "If there are boat-builders among you, be ready to speak with the Queens of what you know."

They seemed surprised at that, but willing and happy. Peter turned to Edmund, with a look inviting him to endorse what had been said.

"Certainly," Edmund began, " we look to the day when we may voyage to the Lone Islands, and see the waving palm-forests which Gale saw, and hear tell again of his deeds."

And that had _not_ been the right thing to say, Peter noted with surprise; their faces fell, and a slight fluttery panic seemed to go through the little group.

"Sire... the trees... the sheep-grazing..."

And precious time was spent in soothing them, and assuring them that it was in the people that the value and attraction of the Lone Islands lay, not the tribute or forest resources or sheep-wool, or any other commodity. By the time the group had been made to understand that no fault would be found in the matter of tribute or trees, the sun was sinking, and Peter and Edmund both were ready for the return to their own rooms at the Cair, where they could simply be alone.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Their private rooms were cool and quiet, and blessedly free of any duty at all. The Fair was doubtless still active under the newly-risen full moon, but the Great Hall and the northern walls lay between; whatever noise there might have been was muffled, muted, _hushed_ by the massy stone and the tranquil spaces between. Peter dropped gratefully onto the plain wooden couch, and ran his hands back over his face, as if brushing all the tensions of the afternoon away.

His brother moved over to the table, where the makings of a simple meal, and jugs of cool minted water and of ale, lay waiting. He ignored the food, and poured them both a drink, took one over to Peter, then settled on his favourite hassock.

Peter nodded in gratitude. "Thanks." He took a long, thirsty swallow. "So, bright boy, how'd you know they were from the Lone Islands?"

" _'true heir of Gale, who stood between us and disaster'_." Edmund quoted. "Gale was the king of Narnia who killed the Lone Islands dragon. Nobody else would give you that for a title."

"Ah. Well done. That's more of _Heroickal Deeds for Young Narnians_; I take it?"

Edmund raised his eyebrows in assent, a quick flick, up and down.

"Well, glad I had you with me, anyway! And I presume when you get back from the west you're going to put all these scraps of history and politics down in good easy-to-read fashion?"

"For my thick-headed brother? Consider it done."

"If I could be bothered getting up..." began Peter, but let the rest of the sentence drop away. The pleasures of privacy and relaxation right now were too good to waste even in friendly wrangling.

He was glad it had been Ed who had made that unexplained blunder about the palm-trees. Edmund seemed able to just brush off that sort of thing, not agonise over what could have been done better. But then Ed took well to all the diplomatic people-handling business - and Susan of course managed as if she had been born to it - but to him it felt more like a constant anxiety, dancing on eggshells, even with loyal nervous subjects like the Lone Islanders, let alone the horribly oppressive business of trying to seem hospitable to people who...

He looked up to see Edmund watching him consideringly, with something of sympathy in his sharp face.

"You know... you do all right."

"How do you mean?"

"You think you're not great at the diplomatic word-stuff, but when you have to speak, you do all right. I know you'd rather have action than talk - you and Lucy both!" He grinned, and Peter replied with a rueful smile, thinking back over some of Lucy's more explosive _action_. "But when we really need someone who can do words like a battlehammer... that's you!"

"Thanks. But I almost feel... well, I _do_ feel! that this expedition to scout out what's happening in the north-west, and deal with whatever vindictive remnant of the Witch's army has been behind the troubles... that will be a _lot_ more comfortable than trying to keep a watch over every word that comes out of my mouth, to ... I don't know.. be as sensitive as a _jellyfish_ to the slightest touch..."

"Nobody could ever call you a jellyfish, Wolfsbane!"

"Wolfsbane's a jellyfish? Who says so?" Susan swung into the room, still alight with the exhilaration of the successful opening of the Fair.

"Our brother is saying that he is not _quite_ that sensitive," Edmund informed her. "I think he's had rather a bellyful of international relations today."

"I'm just not made for all the subtlety and the angling about. You two do it well. Oh, and by the way, Su..."

Susan, busy with the variety on the table, groaned a little on hearing of the reception for Narnian subjects which he had decided should follow the Fair, but assured him that she and Lucy between them could cope, with Tumnus' help.

"And these nut-things... make sure they're on display, will you? The Lone Islanders seem to have been working themselves into fits worrying about whether we'd have enough for their tribute - the nut-trees are dying off or something."

"Will do. By the way... they're not the only loyal subjects to turn up out of nowhere."

"Oh?"

"It's what we hoped. The exiles. It's just been one or two so far, sounding us out. But there are groups of Narnians in Archenland, and Calormen, apparently (that was pretty under-the-carpet stuff - I think they're in a ticklish position) and Terebinthia and even down in some place called Teebeth..."

"Ah! a long way south, I think."

"...so Lucy and I might need to run two receptions - one for the actual current subjects, and a smaller one for exiles who want to return, to discuss matters there."

"Nothing's easy, is it?"

"Oh, some things are! Can you take it easy tonight? You'll eat here? You're not dining with the Telmarines?"

"No." Peter looked suddenly as if all the strain of the afternoon had returned. "I told Cook that was off. I don't think I can do it, Su. I even found it hard to just _talk_ to them. They have come back here - and I know it's my fault - and what they've brought _has_ to have been taken from the dying bodies of... we don't even _know!_ It may have been our own exiles - I don't like it even if it's not, to tell you the truth. But if it _is_ our people who've been hunted and tortured... I managed the welcoming, because of what you said, Su, and I have said I will see them once more, but I _can't_ break bread with them."

"I understand," Susan said. Her eyes were very gentle. "I do understand that, Peter, truly. Truly, High King."

"I hate to let you both down."

"It's not letting us down for you to be what you are, Pete," Edmund commented, practically. "Aslan knew exactly what you could do, and what you couldn't, when he put you here. If you can't... I'm happy to work with that. Su, we told them we'd see them again two nights from now, though."

"The night before you go, Peter?"

He nodded.

"Right. I'll think about it - if the meal's off, we can still have them up from the Fair, anyway. You two, I mean. Maybe have Windseer there as well. Meanwhile..." Queen Susan paused in her planning, and smiled, nodding invitingly down at the little array of breads and pickles and cheeses, apples and radishes, before her, on the table. "How about we drop all that and just look after ourselves for a bit?"

**o-o-o-o-o**

The second meeting with the Telmarines had not been a _total_ disaster, Edmund considered. It had been a mistake, perhaps, to make it on the night before the patrol left. Peter was not edgy about that; as always when it was a matter of standing as protector of Narnia, he was calm, focussed and prepared: prepared for the patrol, for the clear, hard analysis of the situation on the ground, prepared for action and for danger, for battle - but not prepared to endure this insubstantial feinting and manoeuvring with words.

Moreover, his brother could see, that with his mind on the worsening reports from beyond Lantern Waste the High King was wracked by anger at the wrongs done to his subjects there, was angry also that he had not prevented it, and above all was impatient to be gone.

There was good reason to delay until the morrow. The time had been chosen so that the patrol would arrive at the Waste, and travel beyond, as the nights drew closer to darkmoon, the better to have darkness as cover if needed, to move, and observe and strike by night. For that reason departure in the morning, three days after full-moon, made sense. Nevertheless, Edmund understood well that his brother chafed at the delay, and at spending his last night in the Cair playing host to Men who had possibly done cruelties more vile and bloody than those reported from the north-west.

The few brief remarks he had addressed to the Telmarines when they had arrived, as arranged, on the northern wall, had been cold and distant. The plan, as devised by the Chatelaine, had been that the advance in intimacy indicated by meeting actually within the Cair, and walking together along its walls, would engender a useful reciprocal trust, but, faced with the High King's grave remoteness and Hoom's dark and resentful looks, Edmund and Windseer had had hard work to keep the conversation at the level of easy courtesy that Susan had sketched out.

They had asked about the Telmarine territory, about its borders, and the two guests had repeated stolidly that their land had no borders, that they roamed the forest as free Men. "_Narnia's_ borders are established," the High King had interjected sharply, and it had seemed best to leave the topic.

They had spoken of the Wall, and admired how the Telmarines could have descended that grim escarpment with the unwieldy load of twelve tusks; the guests had swerved aside, and refused to talk of it.

They had begun to speak of Narnia's recovering economy, and Hoom's smothered resentment had flared openly. "Yes, it is known how the stars smile on _Narnia!_ That gold lies in your river-sands, and that your Dwarfs can draw iron from your rocks. Telmar..." then, almost to himself, and not to his hosts, "why have the stars smiled here, and yet have been so hard on my land?"

Windseer's eyes had brightened at the prospect of discourse on the Stars and the movements. His lips parted, eagerly, but before he could speak Hoom's insistent voice rose again, this time in bitter, grating complaint.

"The stars smile on _Narnia_ and yet you still stand between us and our trade. You have such wealth! Of gold, of iron... Why do you block us? Why may we not trade freely of _our_ wealth too? Do you think we pick up tusks as easily as Narnians pick up gold, along the river?"

The High King had wheeled to face him, with one sharp gesture silencing all other talk, and demanded abruptly: "Will you take an oath that those you have brought here are not the tusks of Talking Elephants?"

And Hoom's resentment had dropped from him, instantly, and been replaced by a kind of zestful relish; Edmund wondered if he had been waiting for precisely this challenge.

"Majesty, these tusks were stored from my father's father's time, not hunted in my life. How could I have heard it, even if the elephants _had_ spoken?"

"You do not answer my question! Will you take an oath?"

"Should I take an oath to what I have not seen, Majesty?" There was no doubt about the pleasure the Telmarine was taking in evading the king's thrusts. He smiled, with an edge of mockery. "Narnian custom I do not know, but in _Telmar_, we take our word only to what we know."

The High King brushed aside the affront; his voice was hard as tempered steel. "Then speak plainly of what you know! _Have you heard Elephants speak?_"

This had set Hoom back; the smile had disappeared, but he had answered plainly, though with a certain defiance.

"I have never heard an elephant speak, Majesty. Never."

"Have you ever _captured_ an elephant?" Peter had rapped out.

The Telmarine had hesitated very briefly; in that brief moment Edmund noted that the young man, Rezmar, had looked disconcerted, as if the question had been a home thrust. Hoom, however, had gone on to answer, readily enough.

"Yes, I have captured an elephant, but I vow: _it lives yet and has never spoken._ Let your brother king attest, when he returns hence, that the beast is dumb. Further, King of the Narnians, I will declare to you this: if ever any elephant I have captured speaks to me, it may go free. What more would you have?"

The answer seemed clear, and the High King, though he frowned, had taken it as such. He had turned away again, saying moodily. "I accept your word, Hoom. It is good that my brother travels with you in five days' time. But know this," he turned back, "if we ever hear that ivory is taken from Talking Elephants we will - as the Lion lives, Master Hoom, we _will_ close the road through Narnia, and we _will_ make justice for our murdered cousins."

Words as sudden and sharp as a lightning-bolt; in response, Hoom's anger and resentment seemed to flare anew in his face, but he pressed his lips together, and neither High King nor Telmarine had spoken again of the matter.

The conversation had struggled on, and there had been gained that avowal from Hoom; the evening had not been a _total_ disaster. But Edmund had seen the flash of admiration in the eyes of the younger Telmarine at Hoom's words. It had been, he was sure, a misleading declaration; the truth, and yet not the truth. But _this_ night, the night before the High King left to sweep away fear and evil from the north-west, was not the time to unsettle things, or to force uncertainty on the High King.

So King Edmund kept his own counsel; what remained unclear, he promised himself, he would bring to light when he journeyed to Telmar.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Not quite dawn. The moon hung low in the western sky. The air was still cold, but as ordered, the patrol was ready to depart. Peter's last instructions were given to his sisters and brother in brief, unemotional spurts as he checked his equipment, cinched his saddle and ran his eyes over those making ready with him - a small group, hand-picked for a surveillance patrol, not a pitched battle - Wolves, Panthers, Dwarf archers, Badgers and Satyrs, gathered in the Cair forecourt.

"We should be no more than a month. Shortfeather will be my personal messenger to you, Su, and we'll use the other three as relay-messengers." The four Owls had left the previous night.

"If you need to get a message to me, and none of them are back here, send any of the parliament, not any other Bird."

"Ed, don't expect to hear from me directly, and better that you don't send to me unless you need to."

"Susan - I'm sorry for dropping that reception on you, but I thought it would be better to seize the day while they're all here, than to try to organise something when Ed and I are back."

"Lu..., " and for this special sister he did take a minute to stop what he was doing, and squat down in front of her, "just be good, and be happy, all right?"

She looked down at him, her eyes unfathomable.

"I'm not a baby."

"You're not! But you're my little sister, and... I'll miss that smiley face!"

"If I want to do grown-up things while you're away, can I?"

He laughed. "So long as there's always Su, or a grown-up Narnian friend with you."

Her full dazzling smile rewarded him. "That's all right then! Good-bye! Aslan with you!"

All of her older siblings laughed at this abrupt dismissal. Susan caught up her hand.

"Come on, Lucy! Let's watch from down in the Fair, to see how they look when they go! Aslan go with you, Peter. Between his paws."

"Between his paws," the High King repeated soberly. He watched them run helter-skelter down the slope to the lower ground, then turned to his brother.

"Ed... I think there couldn't be anyone better to do what you're doing. But I can't help thinking I'm getting the easy job here, and I feel..."

"Yes, I know," Edmund interrupted him, with a cheerful impatience. "My brother the High King will always think he has to do the lot. Well, you can't, and you don't have to, and Aslan gave this country all four of us! Take life easy for once... if easy's the right word for what you'll be up to!"

The High King smiled, unwillingly. "Easier than what you'll be doing anyway!"

The smile faded, and he went on: "Ed, I want you know that I will stand by any commitments you make there; negotiate, if that's the way it goes, with a free hand. Do anything you have to do to get our exiles free and back to us. Take what time you need to try to decide if the ones appearing as dumb elephants are really our own, especially those hauling logs at the Forest edge, that the Ravens said were maybe showing compassion to each other. That feels to me... but it's for you to judge, when you're there. Still, Ed... could that compassion be a sign that these are our exiles, even if they _don't_ speak? And there is one more thing... "

His voice slowed, and it was with a frustrated uncertainty that he went on, picking his words carefully: "Even for those who were alone, and _not_ showing any compassion, or speech... still, they can feel pain. I've been thinking over and over about our coronation oath, where we swore to care for the dumb beasts as well as the Beasts, remember? _not to let any hold another under or use it hardly_. But outside our borders, I don't know what we can do or should do, especially since we're still getting Narnia back on her feet - I don't _know_! But... bear it in mind?"

"Yes."

The High King looked at him with a sudden doubt. "You'd already thought of that, hadn't you?"

And it was the real Edmund grin which answered, not just the word. "Yes. Aslan go with you, thick-headed brother."

The High King laughed, clouted him on the shoulder and swung up into the saddle. "And with you! Between his paws!"

"Between his paws."

And then soberly and unsmiling - for the early morning Fair was looking up, and it was the part of the High King to enact both Narnia's majesty and her hardness, to show in his own person the land's purpose to defend her borders and her people - he gave the invisible sign to his horse to walk forward, and the little cavalcade set off, the horse clop-clopping, the Dwarfs and the Badgers marching sturdily, the Satyrs and the Panthers and the Wolves moving with their own grace and menace, and overhead, most awe-inspiring of all, the slow, ominous beats of the mighty wings of the General, the Gryphon.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"How did they look?" King Edmund asked his two sisters, as they came to the top of the rise to the Cair gate.

"Wonderful! They looked a bit scary and a bit lovely, and exactly right!" Lucy burst out.

Susan was more restrained, but nodded in agreement. " 'Exactly right' _is_ exactly right. They were exactly what I wanted. And everyone who was awake at the Fair - which meant every country's guards, of course - took note, which should have good diplomatic effect. Oh, it was _great_ that the patrol had to go while everyone was here!"

"You know... he wasn't just doing it to entertain the Fair!" Edmund teased her.

"You needn't think you can get a rise out of me that easily, dear brother! And it's my designated job, I remind you, to make sure all our neighbour countries respect us, as well as like us."

"You're doing brilliantly. Next job: can you point me out from up here some of the exiles? If I'm not going to be here for the reception, I'd like to at least meet them now, or a few at a time over the next few days."

"Be discreet with it. Some of them are very uncertain how things will stand with them in their current homes, if the notion of them coming back gets around."

"Understood."

"And me too. I'd like to meet them as well."

"All right! We'll both go, once our sister shows us who's who."

Susan looked searchingly down at the Fair, now stirring into full daytime activity. "Down there... the man in blue and the boy with him... the family's in Galma right now, but they move about... On the wharf, those two women are from an old Beruna family; they went to Archenland early on... Oh! By the way...the Telmarines! Do you think you might ask them to a meal now?"

"No. I've got a better plan, I think. But not tonight. The moon will still be too bright tonight."

This brought Susan's attention abruptly back from scanning the crowds below. "That sounds _most_ intriguing! Do I need to know?"

"Dear Lady and sister! You know you can trust me!" he teased.

"I do indeed." The affection was warm and clear in her voice.

Lucy suddenly seized a hand of each, and brought them to her face ecstatically. "This is _lovely_! I _love_ Narnia! I love it that we all don't need to know what we're all doing, because we _all_ trust us _all!_"

"We do!" And the elder pair smiled at each other over her head.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The moon rose later, night by night, slowly pulling away from her full glory and leaving the beginning of the night to soft summer darkness. That soft dark, that quietness of night, Edmund judged, made for a better time to get to know strangers; when faces were hidden, or only half-seen, then the people themselves, whatever their form, were free to be open with their thoughts, with who they were.

He spent an evening, and then another, simply being around the Fair after dark. The energy of the days of preparation and of the opening night had subsided, and the novelty of many nations camping close together had ebbed a little; by the fourth night there was quietness, not rowdy mirth, and the silent aisles between the booths lay empty for the most part, only that in or before each booth there was a guard, or two, watchers to see that the goods were kept safe through the night. Narnian Satyrs, as well, lounged on the slopes up to the Cair, and from time to time Centaurs paced on their rounds, a light duty to see that all was well.

By that fourth night, the guards had become accustomed to each other; no guard went far from the home-booth, but they had begun to call to each other, and to gather around the small fires together and to mock each other, nation to nation, in almost comradely ways, as they tried to drink strange drinks, or to match each other in odd tests of skill or cunning.

By the fifth night they had become accustomed, too, to the soft passing presence of the king; he halted, the sixth night, as if by idle chance, at a fire where a mixed group of Archenlanders and Telmarines, and, surprisingly, a Marshwiggle, huddled in near-silence, passing from hand to hand a long and tarry pipe, from which trickled a dank, noxious smoke.

He slipped down into the group, nodding acknowledgement and signalling the needlessness of any ceremony; after a first unsettled stir, they accepted him amongst them well enough. For a time, he simply sat, and was part of them, listening to the what little talk passed; it seemed some business was being done, between the Marshwiggle and the Archenlanders.

"Then we'll send it by packhorse to Beruna."

"Ahhh... but it's rough, that track; lame your horses, I expect. Better you sail it down, Winding Arrow to Shribblemouth."

A silence, as the thick black smoke drifted down. Then the last speaker began again, lugubriously.

"Though there's always bad storms by first-fall; you could drown, and all the leaf lost, too. Terrible waste of good leaf, that'd be."

The Archenlander seemed in no hurry to reply; Edmund deduced that the deal was a done deal, and this apparent discussion of ways and means was more a form of slow verbal celebration dance than actual decision-making. The next time the pipe passed close he held out his hand for it.

"Oh... you wouldn't like it, Sire... too damp for Humans, I should think," the Marshwiggle objected. "Hang in your lungs like a swamp-fog, it would. Not good for the likes of you."

Edmund looked pointedly across to the Telmarines and the Archenlanders. "I see that other Men have tried," he said, "and the tobacco is from Archenland, I think?"

The Archenlander grunted assent; the Telmarines did not speak, but in the flickering light Edmund could see that they were watching keenly, with something of a half-hidden, grinning expectation that the Narnian king would not be able to do as _other Men_ had done. He kept his hand held out for the pipe, and reluctantly the Marshwiggle relinquished it to him.

One long strong pull of breath in - and the vile stuff rushed down into him, not just into his lungs, he felt, but right through his arms and stomach and head, sickeningly muddy and harsh, ripping the skin, seemingly, from his throat, and seizing up his whole ability to breathe. For a long, long moment he was motionless, his mouth clamped shut against he knew not what disaster - even to try to breathe again felt full of unknown consequence. He knew his eyes were open and staring, and knew they were all watching, to see if he could swallow the smoke, could... remotely, deep inside himself, he knew that he was feeling smothered and sick, and also very sorry for the Marshwiggle, whose appalled and anxious face seemed to be swimming before him, larger than it should be, and wavering... the time seemed to stretch endlessly since that one long inhalation...

And then - he had survived it. And breathed out and wheezingly in again, gasping and retching a little, and laughing, too, and the anxiety in the face of the Marshwiggle eased into relief, and all the Men around the fire were laughing - and the stranger King Edmund of the Narnians had become a person known, and not feared, and _not_ strange. It was not the more gracious meeting with their leaders which Susan had hoped for, but it was a start, even just with these two guards; something had shifted, unlocked between them; he could begin to get to know Telmar.

**o-o-o-o-o**

They talked late that night, very slow, meandering talk that drifted heavily down like the pipe-smoke. He did not learn much; that they took pride in living free, that they took pride in the inaccessibility of their land. The Wall ran so far south as to cut off Archenland, at least, and so far north that there had been no possibility of any contact with Marshwiggles before this Fair. The Telmarine guards had themselves only just learned the noxious skill of pipe-smoking, apparently; for them it was part of the wild adventure of travelling to a foreign land. He noted that they swore _by the Stars_, and wondered then how deeply angry they might feel, if they felt, as Hoom had felt, that _the Stars smile on Narnia _but not on their own land.

He asked them, sometime through the night: "Do Telmarines know of Aslan?", but their faces were blank.

"Do you know of things which cannot be seen?"

More blankness. "What is not seen is not known, little Majesty," one of them offered.

Well, he should have expected that.

"Do you know of things not dying?"

"All men and beasts die." Then, a little reluctantly, and jerking his head aside, "The stars die not. They guide us, and they die not."

Edmund pondered long on that one.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The seventh night of the Fair, too, he talked with the Telmarines, though not so late. There were more of them that night, and even Hoom came, and sat beside him. Was it that the guards had told him of the previous night's companionable hours, and that Hoom, no less than he, wanted to build a way to know each other? - or was this Aslan's paw, maybe? Maybe what he was doing was the right way to try to work, though not Susan's way - nor would it have been Peter's way or Lucy's, he thought, wryly. But ... he was himself, and he could only act as he knew.

But the talk that night, though friendly enough, was not deep. Hoom apparently saw the meeting as a chance to try to manoeuvre for Telmar's gain; he spoke of making the trade route permanent, and even pushed for a kingly decree that the Dwarfs should share their iron-making secrets.

Grinning a little to himself at this impossibility, Edmund sidestepped, and raised again the matter of the stars, not least because he had heard slow-thudding hoofs approaching on the grass; Haelwisse would pass soon on his rounds, and might perhaps be drawn into the conversation.

"We spoke of stars here, last night, that stars are guides to Telmar," he began.

And yes, the Centaur had stopped; from the corner of his eye, Edmund could see him leaning on his spear, caught by the talk of _Stars._

Hoom, though, did not seem disposed to speak of what stars might mean to Telmar. He answered shortly. "They guide us."

"They guide you to know which is east and which is north, "Edmund probed, "but do they guide in nothing else?"

Hoom moved his head impatiently. "They show... the stars move across the skies, little king, like the beasts move across the grass. A hunter watches the herd and sees which star strays where. What is watched is known, stars show us what _is_, and... sometimes what is to be."

_What is to be..._ Edmund held his breath.

Haelwisse's deep, melodious voice came from the dark. "We say 'dance'... We say the stars _dance_."

Hoom stood up, suddenly, coldly angry. "It is late, Lord King, and this is not matter for light talk; you should leave us now." And then, refusing to look at the Centaur, but raising his voice to be heard by all around: "All _Men_ know, all Telmar knows, that _only fools and children dance_."

Not even moonrise, yet; it was an uncomfortable - uncomfortably abrupt - end to the night, Edmund mused as he walked with Haelwisse back to the Cair gate. Hoom had come to talk with him, but now seemed only eager to be rid of him. Odd.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Early morning again, as he stood with his sisters to close the Fair. Susan had decided that the next should be in two years' time; he wondered if the other nations would come again in such numbers, and wondered, too, if Calormen might feel that Narnia had taken the world by surprise, and must not be allowed to do so again.

But that was not today's problem. Today was supporting Su in this, the closing scene of her triumphant venture to set Narnia's trade and diplomacy on a sound footing - and then would come the packing and the final words, and then the beginning of his own joyous venture: to set captives free, to bring the good news of welcome again to those wandering and hunted in Telmar. He felt the thrill of it go through him as he stood; the speeches, the applause, the cheers, washed past him almost unnoticed.

And the Fair was over. The crowd began to break apart; Galmans and Terebinthians set off at a trot, as their ships jostled towards the quay, edging to see which would take the place of the Calormene ship, which had slipped into place, apparently, in the very dead of night. He would have liked to have stayed, to observe again the different sorts of vessels and sails which had come from each place; Peter, he knew, was anxious to re-establish Narnia's sea-going power. But the Telmarines had made plain that they would be away swiftly; indeed, most of the men seemed to have already gone, oddly enough - perhaps angry that they had not sold all - or any? - of their ivory, since the two greatest tusks had still been at the booth when he had sat with them on the night before, and he supposed the other ten, which had never yet been put on show, were also unsold. At any rate, most of the Telmarines had gone, and Hoom and Reznar had said that they, and he, would follow before the sun had gone too high. It was time to pack.

**o-o-o-o-o**

He found her in the Great Hall, looking down from the eastern window to the departing ships.

"Susan."

"You're away? Oh, this feels so _wrong_. You should be going with cavalcade and...to just have you leave like this, on foot, and so _alone._" Her voice wavered.

"Cavalcade was for the High King, Queen Susan." He smiled at her, trying to soothe her unhappiness. "And he is he and I am I, and..."

She flung herself at him, and hugged him very tight. "You are _both_ so wonderful! and so _dear_ to me! Look after yourself."

"Of course I will... and Sallowpad and Crimtwing will be checking us every day, and winging straight back to you! And I'll call for more to scout for me if I need it. We've got our codes fixed."

"Of _course_ you have!" she said, teasingly, but her tears spilled over as she laughed; she hastily brushed them away again. "Oh, Ed! Thank you so much for doing this! And if you can find anything about... it wasn't just the Horn..."

"I know." He stepped back, and looked up at the ceiling above, at the thousands and thousands of tiny ivory tiles, which overlaid the multitude of graceful fan-vaults rising from slender pillars, from end to end of the Hall. "If I can find out anything, I will."

"Thank you." She took a deep breath, steadying herself. They stood in a brief silence, then Edmund lifted his voice and called "And _where_ is the great and glorious Queen Lucy?"

"Here!" and his little sister whirled in, looking as excited, eager, and apprehensive as he felt himself.

"You were here all along?" he teased her.

"No, I came in before, but I could see you were private, so I left. And anyway, I was looking at the Telmarines; they're waiting down on the ridge." Her small face hardened as she spoke.

"You really don't like them," Susan observed.

"They are _horrible!_ I _know_ they have killed Narnians; I can feel it! We've _got_ to stop them and get the Elephants away!"

"I'll do my best," Edmund said, and then, "You're right Lu; It's part of our oath. This is what we're here for, or _part_ of what we're here for, and we've _got_ to do it." _Or die trying_, his mind said, but he suppressed that_._ "So...it's time for me to go."

"Then... Aslan go with you," said Susan steadily; she moved to stand behind Lucy, wrapping her arms around her, and gazing straight at her brother.

"Aslan go with you," Lucy repeated, adding urgently, "and say it to us, too, Edmund."

"With all my heart! Aslan go with you, Lucy; Aslan go with you, Susan. Between his paws!"

"Between his paws!" two voices answered him, and then he turned and left.

**o-o-o-o-o**

On the ridge below the Cair, Hoom watched the Narnian king walk through the gate, and smiled inwardly.

He had done it! Under the very noses of these children-kings, and their inhuman protectors, he had carried out a trade which surely they would have blocked, if they had known of it. The Winter had taught Telmar much; those many long years without the chance to trade their ivory for Narnian iron and steel work had shown the unwisdom of relying on a single source for something so precious. Narnia wanted Telmar without iron, weak and dependent, and so they would neither trade nor share their secrets - but Telmar had found a way.

In all the world, only Narnian Dwarfs and Calormenes made steel and knew the secrets of smelting iron. The Dwarf-work was incomparably better; the world knew that. But Calormene axes would bring down trees, and Calormene saws would make them into timber, as well as ever Narnian axes and saws could do; Calormene knives to slash undergrowth, Calormene spears and arrowheads to bring down the great beasts whose ivory was Telmar's wealth... And if ever Narnia did try to invade, then Calormene swords, and Calormene armour... The long Winter hampering of trade was over, and Hoom would not allow any new barrier to crush Telmar further.

_Stars be with us!_ he muttered, and looked to the east. That star, the eastern star, which had given fortune to Narnia, was rising, and he spat, furtively, against it. That star might rise, but it would fade soon enough, as the sun strengthened; Telmar's stars were good to guide all night. _Stars guide us now! Guide us to wealth and power._

And now the boy-king was to hand. The march to Telmar could begin.

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: The parliament Peter refers to when giving his farewell instructions, is the group of Owls living close to Cair Paravel, not a modern elected body. **

**In that same scene, Peter's quoted memory of their coronation oath, "_not to let any hold another under or use it hardly_", is taken from _The Magician's Nephew_, Chapter 11, Aslan's charge to King Frank and Queen Helen.**


	7. Into Telmar

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Seven - Into Telmar**

**The Telmarines were clear** from the beginning that they intended to waste no time in slow travel, nor to make allowances for Edmund's shorter legs on the march. Both Hoom and Reznar greeted him courteously, and Hoom jerked out the names of the two other Men with them - Nim and the shorter one, Wily, whom indeed he knew from the sixth night of the Fair, when he had tried to smoke the Marshwiggle tobacco - but if courteous, they were brief, and the pace they set was swift; he knew that by the end of the day he would be finding it gruelling. Nor did they break long for such small meals of dried meats and fruits as they took on the way. The king had supposed that they might meet again the ten Telmarines who had gone ahead, but no, of those dozen men who had arrived seven days before, carrying the tusks which had so disturbed all his siblings, in their different ways, only Nim and Wily travelled with them.

And those two were empty-handed, so that at least one pair of tusks had been sold, quietly, at the Fair. And the rest? That there had been some movement that last night of the Fair had been reported by the Satyrs, whose eyes narrowed to thin, deceptive slits as they slept, but whose senses were never fully asleep. They had seen and heard movement in the night, stealthy movement from the camp to the quay, and back, and then, after moonrise had seen movement again, quietly, Men departing west, burdened, though they could not see with what. And it could have been Archenlanders, could have been any of the visitors, indeed, even Galmans or Calormenes deciding to travel west to visit with the Telmars, but, Edmund thought, the conclusion was fairly clear.

Well, the guests at the Fair had not been prisoners; they had been free to depart as they would, had been free to trade as they would. Which made it all the more _interesting_, Edmund thought, as he half-jogged to keep the pace, that they had kept secret that some such trade had been done, between the Telmarines and... presumably the Calormenes, since their ship had been at the quay in the morning. He could only think of one commodity that would make sense of trade between those partners; that they wanted to keep it secret felt distinctly... _unsettling. _

**o-o-o-o-o**

"I don't like them _both_ being away," Lucy said, uncertainly. "It's the first time we've been alone together without Aslan."

"Let's go up and watch him as he goes," Susan suggested. The one time they had been alone _without Aslan_ was too terrible to want to remember, now, when they were alone again. "We can be seeing him on his way, and look out for the Ravens as well."

But both sisters felt a further stab of misgiving to see Edmund's smaller, slighter, figure among the fast-moving group of Telmarines.

"They're going so _quick_! They're just trying to wear him out!" Lucy sounded both angry and unhappy.

Susan set aside the thought that her sister probably was completely accurate in reading the matter, and turned to comforting.

"Edmund will manage. And the Ravens have said they'll report every single day - seven of them, Lu, even old Diamond!"

"Ye..e..es," the word was drawn out, doubtingly, "They can _watch_ him, but what if he needs _help_?"

"We have to trust him to be able to manage, and trust to Aslan, too."

Lucy said nothing for a little while; the figures heading west were now starting to drop down out of sight, on the other side of a small rise; even this day's two Ravens flying far off, away to one side, had shrunk to near-invisibility. When she could see no more, she answered.

"I do! but still..." with a return to brisk decisiveness, "Susan, Kirrina says she'll help if I ask her to."

"Help _how_? She's such a fierce little thing, Lu."

Lucy brushed this aside. "I don't know, but she was awfully good before, and I showed her the tusks at the Fair, and she says if I want to, we can..."

"Oh, Lucy! I don't think half-drowning the Telmarines like you did with Neerzat would have helped! And remember what Peter said - he wants you to just be here and be happy."

"Be _good_, he said! And he said I could do anything I liked if I had a grown-up with me."

"Well, that's true! But, come on! we've got to meet Mr and Mrs Beaver and Mr Tumnus and get things ready to receive all the Narnians who have come from far away. From the Lone Islands, Lucy! Doesn't that sound like somewhere you'd like to go, some day?"

"Mmmm..." said Lucy.

Susan thought it best to ignore the dissatisfied tone in that indeterminate sound.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Seen close to, from the steep wooded slope below it, the escarpment was awe-inspiring. It rose sheer, many times higher than the walls of Cair Paravel, and apparently unscaleable - hard, fractured rock, sharp-facetted and unforgiving. Edmund glanced up at it, and then across at the little knot of Telmarines standing below, in close consultation. Though the sun was still far from setting, it seemed that the decision was that they would rest the night, and begin the ascent in the morning.

Good. The king was not sorry to have _one_ short day's work, at least. It had been a hard, fast march across Narnia; Hoom had stopped only reluctantly, and late, each night, and had pushed a savage pace during the day, past Beruna, along by the Great River for two days, then swinging south-west and down across the Murmuring Valley. They had forded the river without great difficulty, though the bottom of rounded treacherous stones had sent one of the men spluttering and choking some way downriver. It had been a revelation, that day, to see Hoom, shouting and running along the river bank, outstripping the river and charging out onto an overhanging rockledge, and finally reaching down with unexpected strength to pluck the man, Wily, from the river, pack and all.

"That was well done," Edmund had commented, as the pair had slopped their way back to join the other three.

"Can the King of Narnia do as much for his subjects?" Hoom had asked, goading him.

"To pull them from a river? Perhaps not," the king had replied, stepping aside from the challenge, and had enjoyed seeing the slight surprise in Hoom's eyes give way to a discomfited realisation that Edmund counted among his subjects some very much heavier than Wily - including those very subjects whose safety was the object of his journey.

But there had been no more talk then. Hoom had insisted on resuming the march, though Wily was stumbling and drenched and Hoom himself was wet and strained from the rescue; they pushed up from the banks of the Murmuring, until that night they lay on the far side of the valley. (And the king had noticed, that night, that the ground did indeed seem to murmur beneath him as he lay on it; he had supposed until then that the valley had been named for the river, but now it seemed more likely that underground streams had given rise to the name.)

After that had come another hard day's march, and now this short day climbing up and up on stony ground to the base of the Great Cliff, of the Wall. Tonight's sleep would be hard and on sloping ground, in amongst spindly, thin-growing trees - not Trees, he felt, though he was still the slowest of his siblings to be able to know these things.

Under the not-Trees, though, he could see at a little distance, perched on a boulder, a Bird, quiet and observant. He stood, and walked, casually, away from the fire.

"Smoke's drifting," he heard Nim call quietly across to Wily, and grinned a little to himself. The names they used for him all told their own tales. This one - or _Mudsmoke_ - was Nim's and Wily's private codename; it amused him that they evidently thought it was too deeply cryptic to be understood. Hoom's words, too, were a kind of code, though of state of mind, rather than meaning. "Little king" was when he was in good humour, while "Lord King" flagged bitterness and irony; "Easterner" was more neutral, but evidently called on a long history of hostility, or at the least, difference. But if he thought of _codes,_ it was time to use his own.

Turning, with a show of tired reluctance, he began the stretching and bending he performed each morning and night, exercise in which a keen observer would note the differences, one day to the next, in the number of turns to the left, to the right, the arm-stretches, the kneebends - and _those_ called forth a protest now, from his tired muscles! But he did not doubt that the exercises would do him good, physically, which was a useful subsidiary to the main purpose.

And perhaps would help him sleep also, though no-one would be falling sleep easily tonight; no-one had even bothered yet to find some patch of ground to call a bed. Maybe tonight again could be a chance to use the darkness to build trust, and to learn.

He wandered back to the fire, and looked briefly across to Wily and Nim. But it was Hoom whose trust he needed most to win, and accordingly he sat down next to the Telmarine leader, and began:

"So tomorrow we climb to your land, Master Hoom."

"Aye." There was a pause. "We do so."

"You will be glad to see it again?"

"I will!" It was said with a spurt of dark energy, and Reznar leaned forward from Hoom's other side to add, more kindly, "Your land is not a land for Men, King Edmund."

"Men have lived there before, and will again," Edmund replied, thinking of the returning exiles. Susan would by now have met with them; more skills and knowledge would be returning to Narnia; perhaps even now things were changing there. "Narnian Men and Women both, to join with all our other peoples."

"Your _other peoples_ are no fit company for Men." Hoom said, heavily. "They will drag you down, king. The half-beasts, and the ghosts..."

"Satyrs and Centaurs? They are not _half_ of anything!" Despite himself, Edmund felt his temper beginning to rise. "They are wholly and wonderfully themselves!"

"Wholly and wonderfully _bestial_!" Hoom replied, with venom, and the other Men looked up with interest.

"Watch the mudsmoke," Edmund heard Wily mutter to Nim.

So they were trying to bait him; Edmund bit back his first response, and replied more calmly, "As to who is _bestial_, or _like a dumb beast_, Master Hoom, I would say those who kill a thinking being act more like an unthinking wolf or tiger than like Men."

"Pah!" Hoom kicked at the fire and sent up a flurry of burning ash. "First find your _thinking being_ and we may talk of this, Lord King!"

Edmund nodded sombrely, without words. In two days' time, perhaps, or four days, at the latest, going by the Ravens' news, he should find them.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The Queen Susan stood on the western battlements, her eyes fixed on one dark speck in the bright sky, and her whole being tensed with barely-contained gladness.

"I can see him!" she called down behind her, and the dark, furry bundle that was Mrs Beaver stumped heavily into view, puffing a little as she came. "Them blamey steps, dear... be the death of me. Which of them is it?"

"Brightbeak! That is, it must be. Diamond said he'd be here by now, and..." Her face glowed with elation. The speck had grown considerably larger as she spoke, and was now perceptibly a bird, a bird whose broad black wings were stroking steadily towards them.

She looked at Mrs Beaver again, and laughed. "We did not _ever_ think we'd need a code for this! He'll be so glad, if we can get the news to him."

Mrs Beaver came a little closer, and took the Queen's hand in one paw, quietingly. The Queen understood at once, and responded.

"Yes, I know. He'd be glad for me as much as anything. It was me who worried the most. But honestly, Mrs Beaver, if it had been that way, if the roof had been made by ..." She took a breath. "..._killing_, I would have managed." She held the paw tightly for a moment, and then went on, "When I thought it _was_, and when I thought my Gift... I thought maybe it was meant for me to learn to be humble..."

"Tscha!" said Mrs Beaver. "You come to me when you've turned proud, dearie, and _then_ I'll show you how to be humble. In the meantime, better you learn not to worry so much."

"Well, I won't _now_!" she answered blithely, and carolled into the air: "Brightbeak!"

Brightbeak was close now, so close she could see the separate long pinions splayed out from the fore-edge of the wing, and the intense drive of the whole short, level body, motionless between those strong-beating vanes, but speeding towards her - and then swivelling in mid-air, and the wings angling, and... Brightbeak dropped his legs down to land perfectly on the battlements, spread his wings wide once more in salute, then settled them again into their proper ink-black sleekness.

"Majesty."

"Welcome, Brightbeak! What news of my brother?"

"He is at the base of the Wall. He has sent greetings to you and the Queen Lucy. He will travel as fast as might be to the northern fringe of the upper forest, where the Free Herd wait."

"If you can ever speak to him, Cousin, tell him..." She stopped for very delight at the news. "Tell him it is well, that _everything_ is well, and that... that the roof of Cair Paravel was made from _tree-ivory_, from amazingly hard _nuts_, truly, like ivory, brought in tribute by the Lone Islanders, for years and years... and oh, tell him it was _lovely_ to meet all the Marshwiggles, too, and all the others from the far corners, and... _everything_ is well!"

She stopped again; Brightbeak cocked his head sideways, silent in respect for an emotion he did not quite understand, and the Queen turned again to her older friend.

"To make me humble... that's how I _would_ have felt, But now every time I look at that glorious roof I'll think of the Islanders, and, oh, Mrs Beaver! Lion bless them and their palm-nut-ivory!"

"Lion bless'em for putting your sweet mind at rest, anyway," said Mrs Beaver.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Can you climb, little king?" Hoom growled.

"I hope so."

They were at the rockface, at a fissure not seen in the afternoon shadows, but visible now in the morning light, a thin fissure, at the base an arm's-length wide, but broadening as it went up to maybe twice that, till it reached a ledge high above them.

"Then watch me! and _learn_!" Nim cried, and leapt up the first few feet, catching himself by pressing with both forearms and knees against the walls, inching up a little further, then grinning, twisting seemingly in air, and stopping again, pressed across the gap with his back against one wall and his feet against the other.

"Learning, king?" he asked, rallyingly, and began to hitch his way upward in short, jolting movements. From behind, Edmund heard Wily's response: "Smoke'll go up a chimney, all right, Nim, you just get your_self_ up!"

Nim laughed, but leapt again, now straddling the gap, balancing with one hand to the rockface, and began to work his way steadily up, pressing hard with his feet and using his hands only to touch, for balance, it seemed. Close to the top of the fissure, unnervingly high, he paused. No-one below spoke now; Edmund felt intense focus in both Hoom and Wily; Reznar's fists were clenched hard, and his eyes were staring.

One breath... two.

It seemed that Nim was gathering his resolution, or waiting until he felt the moment was precisely right, then, terrifyingly, he sprang again, flinging himself across the emptiness, grabbing, clutching with one hand, his feet dangling down into the chasm - and then one more jerk and his body swung, and he was clinging with two hands, and his legs were kicking and his body had somehow disappeared... onto a ledge, Edmund realised. And then the kicking legs slowly withdrew themselves, and Hoom gave a "_hoof!_" of relief, Reznar laughed aloud, and Nim's face peered down at them, tiny and triumphant.

"And so we go."

He heard the voice, but he hardly knew whose. Wily's, he supposed, but... Edmund felt his insides squirm. Were they mad? Did he even have the length of body to do as Nim had done? This was... No. Possible or not, it was what he had to do.

_Aslan_, he thought to himself and walked to the base of the chimney. A clap of hard laughter broke behind him, a shout came from above.

"Not _you_, little king!"

He looked up; Nim was pulling something out of his pack; a rope came tumbling down, and puddled at his feet in a jumble of grey - but already Nim was hauling it up, so that the end wavered just about knee-height, and now he saw that it was a leather rope with one broad slash cut through the hide to make a sling, or a seat.

"You have walked well, Easterner, but to climb - we have a better way for you! Get in."

_Easterner_ put a gulf between them, and Hoom's voice was rough, but there was something of a comradely tone there as well. And the other Men - they were all amused at his plight, and he well understood that. The Narnian King, who had so recently stood on the dais above the Fair, and received the cheers of the crowd, to be hauled up now like a sack of barley! But his chagrin was the least of it... _Forgive me_, he said, silently - what Beast could have given such strong and long unbroken leather, but an Elephant? _Forgive me. I vow no more of you will die this way._ And settled himself into the sling.

Even then, his humiliation was not complete, as Hoom flung himself casually alongside, between the grim, golden-grey walls of the fissure and, by the same bracing and edging method as Nim, ascended, while lending one strong arm to keep Edmund's sling away from the rockface. Not even a sack of barley - it seemed he was a baby to be kept from bruising a hip or shoulder.

But after all, the main thing was to get there, to find the Elephants and to get them to safety; he arrived at the ledge in fair humour, and thanked both Men in plain sincerity.

And it seemed he was not quite the only one; the rope was lowered again for Reznar, who came up, indeed, under his own power, but wore the sling for safety's sake, apparently. Wily, though, laughed up at them all, and spat on his hands and clambered up clinging fingers-and-toes to the rockface, like a lizard.

"See what Men of Telmar can do, king!" he announced triumphantly when he got to the ledge; the faces of all four Telmarines were exultant.

_Yes,_ thought Edmund, _you climb well, but your triumph makes it plain that this was no common achievement, and Reznar has shown me that not all Telmarines climb as well_. It was not possible, he decided, that those twelve tusks, and all the men carrying them, had come or gone by this route.. Therefore... there was another way into Telmar. But that was something he was content for the time to know, and to have the Telmarines unknowing that he knew.

He turned his attention to the Cliff and its challenges. The ledge was large; it dropped away to nothing deeper into the fissure, but widened as it ran back around to the east-facing Cliff. Nim led the group around, and the king was able to look out and for the first time see all of Narnia spread before him, forests and rivers and hills and the still-recovering farmlands. And Table Hill - which he knew only by the four blood-red banners which floated above it, too small to make out at this distance, but that a fluttering caught his eye - and Beruna he could make out, further away, along the Great River, but though he tried, he could not see the Cair for the brightness behind it. He felt oddly cut off by that, that his home was lost to view in the morning sun.

Nim tapped him on the shoulder, and he saw one hand had snaked around his back, as well, presumably to hold him in case he jerked and lost his balance.

"Keep your eyes for climbing, little king. For this next step we climb as Wily did; I go first, and you after. Best you wear the sling again."

He did not argue. It was terrifying enough to be climbing this rockface even with that sling, and knowing that Nim was above and would maybe be able to take the strain if he fell, and with Hoom just below him, shouting instructions - "above you, to your left!"- and guiding his feet sometimes to some tiny crack as a toehold, sometime to some offset for the other foot.

By mid-morning his breath was coming in gasps; to let go of each desperate, scanty handhold to reach high and clutch at the next took all of his resolution, again, and again, and to pry himself away from pressing desperately against the rock to inch up, to straighten the leg which held his weight and inch up just a little farther - each time he thought he would not be able to do it, and each time he forced himself, and did. But at a cost - by the time they reached the second ledge, he was exhausted and trembling.

Nim, however, did not jeer or jest as he gripped his arms and hauled him onto the ledge.

"You have done well, king. Rest now, as the others join us." was all he said.

So perhaps the climb, Edmund considered as he rested, perhaps it really _had_ been as difficult and frightening as it had felt. Long-legged Reznar, at any rate, also came up with the sling around him, and slowly, though his greater stretch managed to move between handholds and footholds more easily.

That second stage had been, it turned out, the hardest part of the whole day's climb, though the rest was slow, hard work, with first Nim, going ahead, then Edmund being carefully tutored up each passage, and then Reznar, with Hoom and Wily coming behind. The sun had moved past overhead, and shadows were across most of Narnia, before they were at the top, and he was standing on shaky legs, able at last to turn his face from the rock, and look out to the east.

And now at last, too, he could see Cair Paravel, all its western windows ablaze in the low rich afternoon light, glowing like a jewel below the narrow silver crescent of the moon, a crown to the shadowed land. Cair Paravel. He took the sight as an omen for good. There he had had been made king; this journey now was his kingship in action. He drew in one long inspiriting look, and then turned, as the others clambered up over the cliff-edge, to take his first full view of the land of Telmar.

He saw a wide, well-grazed shelf of country, a plateau, running right from the edge of the Great Cliff, back to a forest of huge trees and dark shadows, pierced by those same low beams of the afternoon sun. The land rose higher yet behind the forests; he could see far away higher ranges that looked almost black in their own shadow, and behind those what looked like peaks higher yet, where some slopes - snowy slopes? or glaciers? - glowed rosy in the light. The plateau, and then the trees, and range upon range of mountain - it was a sight of heart-shaking majesty and strength.

"Well, little king?" came Hoom's voice, ringing with challenge as well as pride.

Edmund turned, smiling

"It is a very fair land, Hoom. A land blessed, as surely my own. Truly, the Stars do smile on you, as on us."

Hoom's face hardened. "We do not have gold on our river-shores for the picking, nor the iron rocks! We have our own kind of wealth, _when we can trade in it_."

"Hoom... I will not begin my sojourn here, and before these forests, with quarrelling! Let us not speak of trade tonight."

"Not tonight, no," Hoom conceded. "But tomorrow you will journey with me to see the elephants I spoke of, and to see for yourself that they do not speak, so that the trade road through Narnia can be opened to us henceforward."

Edmund felt the day's weariness catch him suddenly, to be beginning so soon the wrangling that he had known must come. But there was no help for it, so...

"I do indeed want to see those elephants, but not tomorrow. Our bargain was that I could travel through your land _where I would_. Tomorrow I travel to the north-west through the forest, to find the Herds which roam freely, and to talk with them."

Hoom laughed, and Edmund saw incredulity on all four of the faces looking at him.

"Not possible, little king! You would lead us a wild chase wandering in the forest like a firefly, chasing you know not what you know not where."

He did know where. The Ravens' flights had spelt out for him day by day, in distant swoops and glides and sudden drops, _exactly_ what were the movements of the Herd, in which direction they went, how many half-days' travel they might be, practising on the whole trek through Narnia the wordless code they had devised, as he had practised back to them his own enacted code - but that was not knowledge to share with Telmarines.

Therefore... to force them on this "wild chase", he needed to force acceptance that he was not the _little king_, the child who had been cossetted on that day's climb, but in all earnest _one who ruled_, and whose ruling on this journey meant the entire economic future of Telmar.

He crushed down in himself the openness and joy which had come from the sight of the forests and the mountains, making himself utterly inflexible, putting all the iciness he could command into his voice.

"Think of it as you will, Hoom; your thoughts are not my concern. This was the bargain you made with my brother the High King, for _one single trade journey_ through Narnia: I travel _where I will_ through these lands. Come with me or come not; I go tomorrow to the north-west. "

"I will come!" Hoom smashed down his pack to the ground, ill-temper making him clumsy, where he was usually a deft-moving man. "You will not wander _alone_ in our land, Easterner!"

"So be it." If the Elephants were to speak, it was better that they spoke incontrovertibly in front of Telmarine witnesses, better that their intelligence be indisputable. "But for now, I think this is not a good place to bivouac tonight. Shall we not move closer to the trees?"

**o-o-o-o-o**

The next morning the Ravens' message was plainly written in the sky - the Herd was less than three half-days' journeying away, on the fringe of the higher forest lands. So close! An incredulous excitement fizzed up in Edmund; he could have laughed aloud with it.

He packed with a light heart, trying hard to keep an unmoving countenance, as befitted the king he had been the night before, but wondered as he did so: was this how Lucy felt, _all the time_? He thought it must be, thought wonderingly and a little enviously that this must be how she perceived the world, every day. And now, he too - he could have almost - _would have_ if these Telmarines were not here! - exploded into action as she did, action for the sheer pleasure of the day; he thought of her as he knew her best, dancing or running or flinging herself at whichever joyous Narnian was there to be hugged, or climbed, or swum with, but - he caught himself smiling and stopped - better not to think of her joy, better to be again the stern _Easterner_ king.

Nevertheless, it was hard not to enjoy the morning's walk. The Telmarines no longer set a punishing pace; perhaps they had pushed so hard before, to be away from a country they were uneasy in, or even afraid of? Whatever the reason, the more easy speed made for a more pleasant day, and though the summer's day was warm, or even hot, walking on level, mossy ground under majestic trees was very welcome after yesterday's rigours. As well, the Telmarines, or the humbler two, at any rate, were calmer, and, simply, _happier_ than they had been. Hoom stalked along, glowering, and gangling, anxious Reznar seemed not to want to displease his senior by enjoying the day too much, but Nim and Wily, though they spoke little enough, were in high spirits, and nudged and teased each other as they walked.

Once, and then again, Nim ran off to one side, out of sight, for minutes at a time. Both times he came back with some forest food - a kind of tree-fungus the first time, which he showed to Wily with a self-congratulatory quirk of his brows, and a ragged bunch of wild fresney, the second time.

"Stop that!" Hoom snarled, the second time. "You forage like a woman!" Then, in a lower tone, jerking his head towards Edmund, "Would you shame Telmar, to be so womanish at such a time?"

Nim pulled a wry face, but seemed content to be called _womanish_; he flashed a covert grin at Wily.

"We will be glad of his foraging tonight, I do not doubt," Edmund commented, calmly, and then, "This plant grows in Narnia, too, Nim. Why did you not gather it there?"

Nim grinned, and seemed on the verge of speaking, but Hoom cut across him, sourly. "And have you accuse us of stealing Narnian property, as you will try to say about our elephants?"

"Ah, but you go too fast for us there, Master Hoom," Edmund offered, in cheerful bantering, "I think we must wait to see whose the _Elephants_ tell us they are!"

Nim openly snickered at this, and Wily seemed to grin. Hoom opened his mouth to reply, when a wordless shout from Reznar jerked all eyes his way. He was a little ahead of the rest, and stood pointing further ahead still, and to the left.

There was a shape, a large formless something, very distant, through trees; Edmund could not be sure... but Nim and Willy and Hoom had all shouted as well, and now the shape turned, suddenly, and sunlight glinted unmistakeably on tusks, and Edmund could discern the _trunk_, the uncertainly wavering movement at the edge of the shape that was the trunk. Not the Herd, but one single Elephant, alone, and a male, therefore, judging from the Ravens' reports.

Edmund felt choked with excitement; he began to run, and only then noticed that Hoom, and Reznar and Nim and Wily had all begun running as well, running and shouting, and then saw - so _soon!_ he thought despairingly - that he was being left behind, he was stumbling, the last of them, the sweat was stinging in his eyes, and his confusion and excitement was being swallowed by a pounding fear of what these Men, these _hunters_, and dealers in ivory, might try to do, to this solitary Narnian, before the very eyes of the King who had sworn to protect him.

Then, from far away, he heard a thin, high bellow, and the shape had turned, again, and was plunging through the dappled green of the forest, and into the shadow between the trees, and was gone.

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: _Vegetable ivory!_** You can read all about it, and how it has been used as a substitute for animal ivory for at least a century and a half, by searching for "vegetable ivory" and checking at waynesword dot palomar dot edu (more or less).

_Wild Fresney_ is a Narnian plant mentioned in _The Last Battle_, Chapter Seven, where it is described as: "a Narnian weed... which looks rather like our wood-sorrel but tastes a good deal nicer when cooked. (It needs a little butter and pepper to make it perfect...)"

Oh, and I would love to tell the story of how Felimath switched from harvesting the vegetable ivory to grazing sheep, and the story of how the High King and his patrol met and overcame a threat in the north-west, and the story of how the Queen Susan forged a sense of belonging between all the more distant Narnians, and began the work of gathering back the Exiles, but then this story would never get to its end. so... it's just going to be the much smaller story as described in the summary! :)


	8. Patterns in the sky

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Eight: Patterns in the sky**

**It was the first he had seen** of the Elephants he had come to save, and now it had gone. Edmund's excitement crashed in an instant into utter breathless blankness, and then the blankness was as quickly flooded over with frustration and rage - rage he was hardly aware of, until he heard his own voice screeching at them to stop! _stop!_ and a string of invective - _bastardsbastardsuselessbloody..._

His mind seemed split in two; somewhere inside, part of him was listening dispassionately to this outbreak, and observing himself standing stiffly, with his hands grasping futilely at empty air; somewhere, his own cool voice was noting that _this won't help_, even as the words were being torn from him.

No. _Had been being_ torn from him. With an effort he choked down the anger, forced his hands to relax. Ahead of him their faces were turning. He hoped they hadn't heard, not too much. The King of Narnia in peacetime, screaming like an Ape in battle - but that too, the self-reproach, he choked back. The present need was not to castigate himself, but to retrieve the situation. He set his face in a calm hauteur, and set his stance to be that of a king, waiting for unsatisfactory and forgetful servants to remember their duties.

They would be compelled to return, he calculated, by their own resolve that he should not be alone in their land - and yes, they were coming back - slowly enough, but they came. Nim and Wily, as they approached, looked at him with shrewd, curious eyes; Reznar farthest back, seemed plainly puzzled, as if he did not understand why there should have been anger from the Narnian guest, but Hoom understood well, and came breathing anger for anger. Edmund knew he had to act quickly to maintain control.

"Was this a _game_ to you, Men of Telmar? A _boy's_ picnic?" He threw all the scorn he could into the word, chancing that as the Telmarines seemed to oppose Beast and Man, and Woman and Man, they would also oppose Boy and Man, and find shame in the attribution - that as they despised dance ("only fools and children dance" Hoom had said to Haelwisse, back at the Fair) they would react against the notion of play. Sure enough, Hoom's face darkened, but before he could speak Edmund swept on.

"Understand this, Master Hoom, that the next time we see an Elephant you will stop, and let me approach him alone. You will approach only when and as I give the word, that you may," he narrowed his eyes and spoke with heavier emphasis, "_hear the Elephants speak_."

"They do not speak!" Hoom shot back instantly, furiously, and exactly as Edmund had intended. Distracted by the last words the king had spoken, Hoom had tacitly accepted the first.

"I do not bandy words, Master Hoom. I have noted that your fellow there," he glanced with a show of contempt at poor callow, lanky, kindly Reznar, "began that unruly uproar. Should it happen again I will know that Telmar does not intend to deal honestly with Narnia."

He let those words hang in the air for the space of a breath, as they digested the implicit threat that such outbreak would be deemed sabotage, and would see Telmarine hopes of a trade road vanish completely. Then, with the appearance of putting the whole incident firmly as past: "We will return now to the course I set."

That was, to the direction the Ravens had shown hours back; he hoped the Herd had not moved on, or had not sensed or heard the shouting and chasing which had driven the first Elephant away. But now was no time to show hesitation, so he turned again that same way; if he needed it, the Ravens and their flight-patterns would spell him out a new way.

**o-o-o-o-o**

All day Hoom would scarcely speak to him, and their meal that night was a near-silent one, though made tasty by the forest-food gathered by Nim, earlier. It was only after the meal that Reznar spoke, hesitantly, but with determination: "King, I regret that my shouting frightened the elephant today. I saw it angered you."

Edmund nodded acknowledgement.

"But, King, do you not see... the fact that the beast ran shows that it is not a thinking beast, as you have thought?"

"How so? Who would not run, set on by a group of hallooing strangers?"

Reznar looked unconvinced, and Nim snorted in derision. Edmund had to remind himself that they lived above the Cliff, where no such group of strangers had ever come. They think themselves fearless, because no-one has ever threatened them, he thought, wryly.

He tried again. "Think! If a strange and unknown animal appeared, and ran at you, bellowing, would not flight be the sign of wisdom?"

"But we are Men, not animals," Wily objected.

"And if they know you for Men," Edmund pounced, "will they not know you for hunters? Is not flight the wisest move, for one who _thinks_?"

They exchanged uneasy glances, all seemed disconcerted by that, but Reznar returned again to argument.

"But there has been no hunt of such a beast in all my lifetime, or our fathers'. The great beasts like that, with long tusks, have moved unmolested for many years now."

Edmund remembered; this had been told to him at the Fair. Their leader, Capun, had decreed that the hunting for ivory should stop when the Winter had blocked the trade routes.

He began to speak, but he was cut off by Hoom, speaking angrily and definitively.

"We see they are animals, and _less_ than man because they wander without reason through the forest. What greater sign can there be? Beast _wander_, Men go where they know."

Reznar and Nim nodded, as if what Hoom had said was unarguable, and Nim leaned across the fire to say, earnestly, as if instructing a baby, "All things are in order, King. That which cannot move, and that which moves without reason, and Men who move with reason, and Stars."

"That which cannot move?" Edmund queried.

Nim grabbed up the remnants of the wild fresney. "These! All things are in order. The animals are greater than these, and men are greater than the animals."

"And womanish men gather growing things, and true men hunt animals!" Wily muttered, grinning and poking slyly at Nim.

Ah. Some things about Telmarine ways and thinking were beginning to be clear, Edmund thought - also that not all Telmarines held to them with Hoom's angry passion.

"Women deal with plants, and men deal with animals? And animals are higher than plants, and men are higher than women?"

They looked at him, all somewhat puzzled at his denseness. It seemed that that was too obvious to need saying.

"And moving in an ordered way is a sign of wisdom?" He was beginning to see why the Telmarines were uneasy in wild Narnia.

"Look you, Easterner!" burst out Hoom. His teeth were clenched, and he seemed almost shaking with passion. "What is the highest of all things?"

"Tell me."

"All Men know this! The _Stars_ are the highest of all things." He glowered, incredulous and angry, at the king, then looked away into the dark, and began again, as if to himself: "Have they not guided the fathers of our fathers, did they not bring us safe through darkness..."

His voice began to take on the rhythms of a chant, and Edmund realised that he was on the edge of what the Telmarines saw as sacred mystery. He was silent, remembering how Haelwisse had unwittingly offended, in Narnia. Reznar spoke, quietly. "He speaks true, King. In the most ancient times, our songs tell, it was the Stars which guided us. We had wise men then who could look at the stars and tell which way to go, and what weather was coming, and how to seek safety."

Hoom's chant had died away, and his eyes had closed. They opened suddenly now and glared at Edmund.

"The Stars do not wander like unknowing beasts, they move in wisdom, and bring _knowing_ to Men. Men live by the Stars; they know and have order. Thus it is right that they rule over beasts, who have no order."

There was much to think over, there, but nothing to be gained by challenging on such matters, so late at night. Edmund contented himself with:

"Tomorrow, we will find the Herd, and I will ask them to speak with you, and you will see that Beasts also know and have wisdom, though they may move in ways too subtle in their order to be seen at quick sight. For now, good night."

**o-o-o-o-o**

It was not the morrow, but the morning after, that they saw the Herd. They saw them far off, and though the Telmarines obeyed Edmund's order, and stayed behind him, and were quiet, the Herd would not allow an approach, but moved away, melted into the forest and were gone.

Hoom's triumph was silent, but very clear to see. Nor did the other Telmarines speak, though they exchanged glances which said much.

Late the same day, they again saw the Herd in the distance. Once again, the Herd moved away as the Men attempted to pursue. This time Reznar edged close, and spoke quietly, and even placatingly, to Edmund.

"You see, King? They are no more than beasts, wandering."

Edmund did not reply, but thought the more. There was no help for it, he decided. He needed to speak with the Ravens. Well, he could risk it; the Telmarines had slackened their watching, as they became more convinced that his mission was futile and that he would need to admit defeat. That evening his enacted code - star-jumps, push-ups, knee-bends - brought the day's Raven fluttering unseen, to a low branch in the darkness. The king moved away from the fire, close to the shadows; he no more than breathed his words, but it was enough.

"Find why they will not let me near."

Three silent beats, and Sootfeather was gone; the men had not yet settled to sleep, when a single croaking call alerted the king that his messenger had returned. She could not whisper, but she managed a low, breathy rasp.

"They say: Not while these Men are by. These Men have stolen children. Not while these men are by."

_Stolen...?_ Not just long-ago hunts for ivory, but... realisation of the double-speaking of the Telmarines came like a thunderclap: Reznar's assurance that "great beasts like that, with long tusks, have moved unmolested for many years now..."

Yes, the great Beasts were safe, but what of the children, the Calves... had _they_ moved unmolested? And what became of them? The slave-elephants which hauled the logs, or those who had turned and turned the great capstan, or hauled ferries back and forth across rivers? Not great Beasts bearing tusks, but stolen children, hunted as babies, cut out from the Herd and turned into _slaves?_

The king felt his resolve become iron-hard. He spoke through clenched teeth, and unwarily.

"Tell them I will meet them any way they will. Tell them this will not..."

"King? You speak?" It was Wily's voice.

Soft movement, dark wings stroking the air; Sootfeather had gone.

"No." he called back, then "I said, it is time for sleep, I think."

And he returned to the fire, but between fury and hard thinking, he slept ill.

Sootfeather returned the next morning, no longer to use speech, but calls and signal-flights.

Edmund watched, covertly, as he packed up for the day's walk, and spelt out, slowly, the message. A rapid stuttering call. _They will meet you._ A swoop to the west. _By night._ A sudden drop. _Be ready._

**o-o-o-o-o**

It was a moonless night; the right night for covert meetings, when darkness hid anything beyond the closest of the trees around. The king lay unsleeping, straining his ears to hear; around midnight, there was a single beak-clack - sign enough. Silent as the smoke they called him by, he slipped from his place, and crawled into the dark, trusting that he would be guided.

Once well away from the sleeping Men, he stopped, stood, and listened again. Sure enough, a faint wafting of air hinted the way, a sound of soft wing-beating. He trod as silently as he knew how, forward into dark, between tall guardian trees, and listened again. Again that almost noiseless movement of the air; again he moved forward, a shadow in shadow, and stopped.

Nothing.

No sound. But a vague impression of a presence, of an unseen bulk...

He nearly cried out. Something heavy, solid and strong had curled around him, gripped him, and pulled him irresistibly forward. The trunk of an Elephant, he knew in the same instant - but he had never before realised how frightening powerful an Elephant's trunk could be.

It took all his self-control to yield, to let himself be taken, drawn into the dark, dragged off his feet by that overpowering strength. He heard one _hooff!_ of breath expelled, and then he was aloft beside a huge head and moving silently and fast, through invisibility.

He could not see where they were going, though after a time he began to make out the outlines of the head close by him - the bony forehead, the swell of the cheek where the tusk emerged, the eye. The eye did not look at him; the Elephant held him without recognition and without warmth. He felt chilled, and then reproached himself; had he expected to be welcomed and fawned on as a rescuer?

Then the Elephant stopped. He was set down. Dimly outlined by the starlight against the ghostly trees, he saw looming shapes, the shadowy, indistinct forms of the Herd. For a moment there was silence, then one moved forward from the rest, and spoke, with hard, bitter authority:

"We have come. We have met you as you have asked, for the sake of old memories. What do you want with us?"

No. They were not going to fawn on him as a rescuer. This task was harder than he had thought, and finding the Herd was apparently only the beginning of it.

"You know why I have come. I want to give back to you peace and safety in your own land."

The lead Elephant spoke with a quiet intensity. "What is _our own land_?"

"Narnia was your land, but I come to bring you safety in that or this or any land."

"Safety!" The intensity became in an instant barely-repressed violence; her trunk lashed, and her ears spread out, making her seem suddenly much larger and more threatening. "Safety! For three days _I_ alone have held back the Herd from trampling you and your fellows to death, in anger that so small a group of Men would dare to come close to those they have so injured. The Herd and the young males who roam away and the Bulls who speak from far, they have all wanted to tread you, all five, mash you into pulp, like fallen fruit. Your safety thus far has been _my_ gift, Man. Who are you, to claim you have safety in your gift?"

He did not doubt for a moment that she spoke truth; around him the first cold indifference seemed to be shifting into hostility. He wondered if his answer would deepen the hostility into threat.

"I am King Edmund of Narnia, and I have come because Narnia is now free..." He noticed as he spoke that the Elephants had begun to sway, lifting and then tramping down with their feet. "... and your Kings and your Queens, and all your cousins would see you return to us, to be safe from the terrible wrongs you have suffered."

She set aside most of that speech. "You claim kingship over us, _Man_?"

"I have been crowned king of Narnia by Aslan himself, who is King over all of us. But that is neither here nor there; it is not my kingship which is important here, but your peace and your freedom."

"_Aslan..._" "_Aslan..._" A shivering went through the whole Herd. One young, high-pitched voice quavered, saying "Is he _true_, Nharhh? Is _Aslan_ true?".

So.. he had at least a name to use. "Lady Nharhh, it seems much has been forgotten, but Aslan is indeed real, and ..."

Another shiver went through the Herd, but not hostility, this time; there was a _hrroomm_, blowing, blurting sound with their lips, which sounded unsettlingly like muffled laughter.

The lead Elephant spoke, and certainly her voice showed amusement. "My name is Rummornornarhh. The child called me _Nharhh_ because I am a mother here. We are all _Nharhh_, all the mothers here are _Nharhh_."

"If I have offended, I am sorry. I did not intend disrespect."

She moved closer, and nudged at him with her trunk, pushing him back, He staggered, but managed to keep on his feet.

"You have not offended. But it is very long since a Man has called one of us _Nharhh._"

The mother-Elephants around huffed gently and swayed. Edmund thought they were still amused, but that he had, blunderingly, managed to do something right.

"What may I call you, then?"

"Call me by my name."

"Lady Rummornornah, I have come first to tell you that Narnia is free now, and that a welcome awaits you in Narnia, that we yearn to have the Lost back among us, free from the threat of the hunting."

They were listening now, at least - listening quietly, with their heads down. There was a stillness, and then Rummornornah spoke, soberly, though still with a shade of amusement in her voice.

"You yearn for the Lost. But how could you take us to Narnia, when there is the Cliff between us and that land?"

Her question - not _if_, but _how?_ - flooded him with the energy of hope; he was so close now, to success.

"Any way we need to, Lady, if I have to dig the road myself! But I think you have come here by some road, once, and therefore there will be a way back."

She huffed amusement at that, too, but replied: "It is very long ago that we came here, before the Calormenes had extended so far to the west, and before the pleasant land of Tibar became desert. Once there was a road far south of here, but no more. There is no way for us to leave this land and its hunters."

"I swear to you all here present, as I am King of Narnia, that we will find a way, or make a way, to have you free from the threat of hunting."

"Free from the threat of hunting? You draw our hearts with that thought, Man. These Men here are vicious, clever hunters. It is not only the death they once dealt to the young males, and even the great Bulls. Not only that. Many times they have come in strength, and with fire, have surrounded, and..." - her voice dipped, from shame, Edmund thought - "...panicked the Herd. The Nharhh mourn for many Calves, many Calves lost over years."

The lowered heads were very still; from among them came a sound so deep that it seemed to shudder rather than be heard, shudder in the air or the earth, he could not say which.

Rummornornah breathed out a long breath, and continued. "It is long since we have heard of a male being lost; the Men have long stopped the killing. But even if they start again... You need not dig the road, Man; we will not leave. How could we leave for safety in your land when we know our captured Calves are here?"

He had half-expected this. "Then, Lady Rummornornah, I have another way. I come to ask you to meet with Men, to show them that you are indeed not dumb animals, but thinking, and feeling and speaking. Only that way can I persuade them to cease their hunting..."

Now there was another _hrooom_, an angry rumble through the Herd, ears raised and spread, and trunks swinging threateningly.

"You ask us to prove ourselves to them, to _persuade_ them? No. We will not perform for Men. They have seen us defending our lives. They have seen us mourning our children. They see our children in captivity, caring tenderly for each other. What more do they need? They know well that we think and feel."

Another Elephant pushed forward. "They _have_ known, but now they do not want to know. In the past they knew, but they closed their minds to knowing we are their equals, because they wanted to profit by us. They closed their minds and so they closed their ears. Could they even hear our voice, now, if we spoke?"

Rummornornah tossed her head in agreement. "Narrndurrh speaks well. They have turned away from hearing, and so they cannot hear."

"But Nharhh," a younger female objected, "there are those of us who do not speak now, too. Boramurrdun, there, is one who has let drop the speech of Men."

Heads swung, to look behind Edmund at the Elephant whose trunk had held him, earlier. He looked back, blankly; clearly he did not understand.

"Lady Rummornornah?" Edmund asked, feeling as if whole new gulfs had opened under him, "Are your people beginning to let fall the gift of speech?"

Rummornornah's voice was quick and savage in reply. "We have our own speech among us, for us alone! If they will not hear us, why should we speak in their tongue? It was not our people who first dealt death."

And now he felt that the success was melting away in his hands. "No, and I know many have died, though I think not for many years. But Lady, if we cannot prove that you speak, they may begin again to kill."

"Let them kill, and die, then. Do not doubt, Man, we can kill also. We would have killed these days past, but for your Ravens."

Narrndurrh cut in again, scathingly. "The great ones of the past who died did not die alone, Man; many Men died with them."

This seemed to stir up a rumble of agreement in the Herd, and one Elephant, hitherto silent, spoke. "Bram. Great Grundurran. Those took many with them to bloody death. Mighty Hoom..."

"Hoom? One of you was called Hoom?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth he wished them unsaid.

"You have heard the name?" Rummornornah asked sharply, and was quick to draw the conclusion. "They use our name among Men?

"They use that name." He tried, clumsily, to repair the damage. "It is true that they honour the memory of the Elephants they have killed, in naming their children."

But the anger was building again, the Herd was shuffling, snorting, trampling. Short squeals and trumpetings began to rise. From among them, one voice - he could not see whose - pierced the night. "There is no honour in theft. They steal and enslave our children, then steal our names for their own children, and you call this honour? You ask us to prove to them that we _think?_"

His mission was ... he was failing. He was not winning these back to Narnia, nor to any peace with the Telmarines.

Rummorornah spoke with hard finality. "This is our answer. We will not leave this land, to leave our children in captivity. We will not prove ourselves to those who know well what we are, but will not see or hear. This talking is finished. Go."

His hopes were crumbling. He could not command, and he could not persuade, he could only...

Impulsively, he flung his arms wide front of her. There was only one more appeal he could make.

"Nharhh!"

And then no words. He would not insult her by imagining that words were needed.

Nor were they. The Herd was silent, and in the silence he could feel the anger and the hostility fade.

Slowly, Rummorornah's trunk swung out to him, and he felt its delicate tip caress his cheek.

"Child. Child, we, too, long for the Lost, for the ones who called us _Nharhh_ indeed. I think there is nothing you can do for us, but for your asking, and for that word, _Nharhh,_ I will say this: Find and free our children and we will hear you again." He looked at her eyes, and saw that only a deep sadness remained. "If you cannot free our children, then... you have nothing to offer us. Now, go."

**o-o-o-o-o**

The Telmarines were already stirring when he re-entered their camp. Wily looked at him quickly, and searchingly, and Hoom suspiciously, but it was Reznar who asked in plain words. He did not bother to answer, only going to begin to pack, and as he did so rapping out his commands to the scrambling Men.

"It does not matter where I have been! Up, up! We are away now, back the way we have come, and further yet, the way you would have had me go the first day. Hoom, _now_ is the time we will go to see the Elephants you call yours."

**o-o-o-o-o**

All the four days' journey which followed he pressed forward impatiently, urgent to reach the slave Elephants. The Herd roamed free, and to find them he had needed to check every morning the Ravens' patterns in the sky, but the slave Elephants had been well watched, and mapped, for months past, those who were solitary beside rivers, or working the great capstan, and those who worked in teams, hauling logs from the south-western forest. Those maps he had himself drawn and redrawn, and could summon up now, precisely, how ran the sharp, true lines on creamy parchment, and could see as well, and as exactly, how those lines fitted now against a sharper, truer reality.

First they would travel to the solitaries, he thought, the capstan Elephants first, in part because he had already suspicions about the purpose of that capstan. Then the ferry Elephants, and lastly the longer journey to the timber-hauling teams of the south-west. To find them, and find a way to free them - there was, he remembered, Hoom's promise that of the Elephants he called his own, any who could speak would be instantly freed. If he could persuade one to speak, and then the others would follow when they saw it led to freedom...and together they could travel to the south-west, and then... All the days back to the Cliff, and then south along the Cliff-edge, he fed his hopes with imaginings, striding fiercely ahead of the others, his fists clenched tensely, and in his mind seeing the joy of the Nharhh, greeting the returning Calves.

But they came to the place, and... he halted. That it was the right place was plain, but where the Ravens had seen a great wooden capstan, driven round and round by two Elephants, was only a dusty trodden circle of bare earth.

Well - it was a setback, but only a small one. The Elephants could not be far. And also, that the Telmarines had dismantled the capstans only confirmed his suspicions, that they had been used to raise and lower something - a platform, or a cage -to make a way into Narnia. So... how best to use this knowledge?

He glanced back at the Telmarines, to find that they were looking at him now with mingled suspicion and fear.

"How did you...?" began Reznar, but Hoom was quicker to recover from the shock of finding that their guest knew more than he should.

"You have led the way, Easterner," he said, dryly, "Why have you brought us here, where there is nothing?"

"I came to see with my own eyes how the Telmarines stray from plain dealing," he replied, with a fine-judged savagery. "The way we came, climbing unaided the Great Cliff, showed me much of your skill and hardihood, but this _nothing_, which so recently was another way to conquer the Cliff, shows me more what manner of Men you are."

They were all disconcerted at that direct attack, though Wily, at least, seemed half-admiring as well, grinning a little to himself. Hoom, however, rallied, with: "We _are_ plain-dealing Men. We have spoken only truth."

"And left unspoken other truth, and have even unbuilt what was here, to conceal truth," Edmund retorted, and let that sink in for a moment, before adding, "But you see that such ways avail you nothing. So now we will go to where the Elephants are, who were used to tread this circle."

They did not argue. They were cowed by his unexpected knowledge, he thought, and led him silently further away from the Cliff-edge, back towards a belt of trees, perhaps remnant of forest which had been cleared in times past, he thought. The sun was to the west, and in his eyes, but he saw ahead, a tall timber pillar, standing high above these smaller trees.

They came through the belt of trees, out onto the further plateau, and at first he saw nothing through the dusty sun-haze, though he heard a clanking, and a dragging sound. And then, plodding out from the glare of light, he saw the Elephant: shackled, chained, with a double chain which ran back through the dust to loop around the base of the pillar.

Shambling and unseeing, it passed him by, one great foot placed steadily after another, and the chain dragging in the dust, gathering up little stones, and leaf-litter, and catching and then skipping as it was dragged again forward by the remorseless, steady, tread.

Remorselessly, round and round... Edmund fished in his brain for the animal, for the _thing_ he was reminded of... some_ thing_ back in that other place, but he couldn't quite remember, something which creaked and groaned as it went, and ceaselessly, ceaselessly plodded like this. Something which worked on and on without thought, without feeling.

Without feeling. This rolling, unresting, ponderous movement was more horrible than anything he had seen yet, certainly more than the flashes of anger and hostility from the Herd. It was as if the real self inside the flesh had died, and left only this hull, endlessly shambling through dust. He remembered the Elephant who had forgotten speech, and wondered how much more this one had forgotten - could a Narnian slip back into plain animality? Nevertheless, he stepped out, as the Elephant came near again.

"Good friend! Good Cousin!"

The Elephant did not pause, did not glance at him, did not seem to see anything at all.

Behind him, Edmund heard a muttered jeering remark from Hoom, and a snort of smothered laughter from the assembled Telmarines. He tried not to notice, and extended a hand to the Elephant when he next passed, but the steady plodding did not falter, that round was completed and the next and the...

"Can he be stopped?" Edmund asked.

Reznar smiled cheerfully, went to the Elephant's head, and tugged at the chain which was anchored to a ring driven through the Elephant's lip. The Elephant stopped, but still without turning its eyes anywhere; they seemed to be almost dead, belying the life shown by the restless swaying to and fro of that huge body, and by the turning, turning, tossing of the great head.

"Cousin! I have come from Narnia to speak with you!"

But he could hear himself that the conviction had drained from his voice. The Elephant did not respond, not even a flicker of response. He could not hear, or could not understand - and if even the Free Elephants had begun to refuse the gift of speech, what hope was there here of persuading this slave Elephant, with eyes that looked at nothing, to speak, to win freedom?

"Cousin!"

But the Elephant continued to sway, turning and turning the great unseeing head, and lifting his feet, restlessly and - surely? - mindlessly. He was broken completely, the king thought; the strong body still laboured, and would labour for decades, but the mind had been broken, utterly.

"Let him go as he will," Edmund said; he was overcome by a very deep sadness.

The Elephant moved away again, and resumed its ceaseless rolling stride. The doubled chain chinked as it dragged.

Stock-still, desolate, Edmund watched. This was flesh, moving without thought. He could not save this. This was broken beyond all fixing. This was despair.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The afternoon wore into evening. They took him to a second circling Elephant. As they had been kept separate when they worked the capstan, so they were kept separate now, the king thought bitterly, now, when their treading was meaningless. His escort showed him also three ferry-Elephants, kept solitary, beside rivers to pull the ferries back and forth on clanking chains, and those, too, were shackled to the chains.

But not in any one of these could he awaken a response. Day sank into evening; night was falling as he turned despairingly from the last of the ferry-Elephants, the last to stare unseeingly past him as they all had done when he tried to talk with them. How could he free these, which had no thought left to take up freedom?

"So... will you accept now, King of Narnia, that these are Telmarine elephants?" jeered Hoom, then caught himself, and went on more civilly, "We may soon find our way to an agreement about trade, I think."

Edmund could not bear to look at the triumph on his face.

"I cannot say." He forced out words of some sort. He was here, after all, to negotiate on Narnia's behalf with these people, and still had to find some way forward for the Free Elephants. "We will rest here tonight and tomorrow begin the journey to the south-west."

"As you will," Hoom said, complacently, and slung down his pack.

"As you will, king," Reznar echoed, agreeably. "That will take us through where most of our people live; you will see some of the glories of Telmar then!"

Edmund looked up, momentarily confused; was Reznar attempting to offer _the glories of Telmar_ as a pleasant diversion from the horrors of slavery?

And yes, it seemed so; the tall Telmarine's face showed a blundering goodwill, and rough sympathy. In a low voice, he added, "I am sorry for your disappointment, King. But you judged too high of simple beasts."

Not of Beasts, the king thought bitterly. It was of himself that he had judged too high.

He had met the Herd and had failed, and found the slaves and failed. He had failed, and could only fail; he had failed even to see any self left inside the living bodies. And it was evening, and away against the western sky he could see a Raven, waiting for his nightly report, transmitted in physical twists and jerks, to the Cair.

What did he have to tell them, what of good news could he send now? Only to share the knowledge that he was not able to achieve that which he had come to do, to share the pain that he had come and failed. He could do nothing for those he had come to save.

He walked a little way away, mechanically, to begin with the usual "All's well" toe-touching. But... all was _not_ well.

He stood still, fighting to control his breathing. There were still the Elephants of the south-west, he told himself; he might still... but no. He could not send that confident, self-confident "All's well".

Tension and frustration and anger and wracking sadness welled up in him, almost choking him, and without thinking, he found himself not making those calm sweeping bends of reassurance, but instead exploding into action, with the strange death-dealing punch-_chop!_ punch-_chop!_ which the Satyrs had taught him, attacking the empty air, again, and again, and again.

And stopped, breathing hard, to find himself closer than he had thought to where Wily was feeding twigs, one at a time, into a small smudge-fire, a little away from their main campsite. The Telmarine looked at him, sidelong.

"King?"

"Yes?"

But Wily seemed not to know how to say whatever he wanted to say. He glanced up and then down again, before speaking.

"Don't... don't take it hard, King. You can't change what they are."

Even the Ravens had thought that these were not Narnians, Edmund recalled. But if he could not win the slave-Elephants to speech, the Free Elephants would not find safety. He did not reply.

"Not saying they don't think in their way." Wily, like Reznar, seemed to be trying to offer _comfort_, the king thought bitterly. But...

"What do you mean _think in their way_? You _know_ that they think?"

"In their way. In their way. Like... See, like - they called me after... My dad died by an elephant. He was, the elephant, he was what we call a wily one. Not easy to catch. You don't... " His eyes flicked up, very quickly, and then away again - "know'em like we do, King. They can be wily, all right, but Men are wilier. Hey, King?" A quick, sly smile flashed across his averted face. "Tell you what, if I was an elephant, I don't think I'd let on I could talk, even if I could. Hey? We nearly had _you_ fooled just by saying nothing!"

A few light words, but they hit like a blow. Edmund felt almost winded. Yes. Of course. Lack of speech could mean many things. For some of them, yes, it might mean self was lost beyond recall, but for others, especially those last, where dusk had hindered close scrutiny - there was still possibility. Elephants, as well as Men, might hide things, by simply saying nothing.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Majesty, I bring..." The Raven stopped, then hopped uncertainly along the Cair battlements, where two Queens stood, waiting.

"Pryclaw?"

"Majesties, it is not clear to me. The king signalled at evening, but the message was not clear."

"Clear or not clear, tell us," said Susan steadily. "What did he signal?"

"Just one word, but many times." The Bird jerked his head sideways, and then ducked it down, as one not wanting to speak. "An ill word."

Lucy's hand slipped into Susan's, and gripped hard.

"Failure." Pryclaw looked nervously at the Queens, and said again, a little louder, "one word, many times, Majesties. Failure. Failure. Failure."

**o-o-o-o-o**

"We have to _trust_ him."

"But we have to _help_ him. If he needs help we have to send it."

"If we had help to send, I would send it," said Susan, "but we haven't, so it comes down to _trusting._"

"If it comes to trusting...," Lucy began, and then stopped, to begin again, "Susan, you say _trust __him_. But you should trust _me..._"

"I do, but..."

"_Susan!_" There was almost anguish in Lucy's voice. "Sister and Queen..."

Susan's head jerked up. This was Peter's title for her, used at his most serious; Edmund had sometimes used it, as he used all their titles, teasingly, but not Lucy, not ever before.

"We have to help Edmund. I am going to talk with Kirrina, and..." Lucy's eyes were searching, hoping, "trust me."

_Trust me._ There was the barest hint of a question in the words. The elder queen had a brief flash of memory: this same little sister, when Peter left, exclaiming in ecstasy and certainty that "we _all_ trust _all_ of us!"

But this was a _child_.

Her own little sister, for whom she was - wasn't she? - responsible. She was shaken with fear and a kind of anger at how _unfair_ it always was. Why did the others always seem to know what was right to do, and she alone was left wondering? But she could not refuse _trust_, not to those eyes, not remembering that ecstasy and certainty.

Her lips felt frozen, but she forced herself to speak.

"I... am trusting you."

But Lucy was still hesitating. It was not quite enough. She made her lips smile, made her voice warm, and added the words, like a crown. "Sister, and Queen!"

And a quick, hard hug, and rushing footsteps, and Lucy had gone, to make who-knew-what plans with that unchancy little friend. Susan took a deep breath; it would be all right; Lucy had promised, after all, not to do anything "grown-up" without an adult Narnian alongside. It would be all right.

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**


	9. Breathless

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Nine: Breathless  
**

His first sight of Reznar's home village took his breath away.

"We build from trees," they had told him, as they had slogged the two days' journey from where the last of the ferry elephants (_or Elephants, _his mind insisted_; what if he had abandoned them, and they were..._) hauled the dripping chains.

"We build from trees," and then they talked further about the felling of the trees, in the western forests, and the work-teams of elephants. (_Elephants. The Ravens had said that these might be, and this would be his last chance to return some of the lost Calves to the Nharhh..._)

"Ah, King, we have conquered both elephant and forest! There's no house being built now, or else you'd see how the elephants work for us there, too. To build a house is a great work, a work fit for Men. The roof-raising... that is a great thing to see..."

It had been no use. He had listened with less than half his mind, while the rest of it went over and over again the scenes with the slaves. The Free Elephants who would not listen unless he found and freed their Calves, the slaves who would not even seem to see him - but might after all be those he needed to free.

But still Reznar had babbled on about the village he was going to, and how, after seeing Cair Paravel they wanted to show him their great houses, and let him meet their great people, and hear the music... And Hoom, striding ahead, had not demurred, and even Nim and Wily had seemed pleased and excited, eager to show whatever it was that they thought Telmar had to offer. Houses built from trees... yes. And campfires, he expected, and goat stew and foraged forest food. A village built of forest-timber, where Telmarines and their unknown chieftain, Capun, led a rough camp-life, though adequate enough, he supposed.

_Savages,_ the silken Calormene ambassador, Neerzat, had called them, and, yes, it was hard to see how wooden huts, where rough forest-dwellers who had not even advanced to the notion of kingship, could offer any of the gentilesse or courtesy which other peoples knew.

But then...they had come through the trees into an open space, and before him was a..a temple, a cathedral, a .. he didn't have the words for this wildly soaring magnificence, with roof upon roof, up and up in high, swooping curves, graceful and airy, almost poised for flight.

It took his breath away, and Reznar laughed exultantly, for pleasure in his amazement, Edmund thought. Indeed, they were all looking at him with the same pleasure, even Hoom, who could not forebear hitting home the message.

"Now you see, do you not, King? the difference between Men and Beasts. Did you think we lived in our home as we camped in the forest?"

And the rebuke was merited, he acknowledged, silently, even as he drew nearer, and could take in the solidity of the towering pillars, and the broad intricately-carved balcony which ran the full front of the building, high off the ground, but still far below the high-winged roofs. He had always imagined that grandeur in architecture came with stone, brick, metal and glass, the creamy stone of many-turreted Cair Paravel with its glittering windows, or Red Anvard, with its curious jade-green cupolas, or the rumoured marble courts of Tashbaan.

This place, though - this had a grandeur of its own. Even the very timber itself - he found himself gazing, as he ascended, at the solid treads of the steps, each a massy timber slab, jutted into the timber columns, but airy-seeming, with no riser between. Above, on the balcony, a small cluster of Telmarine women and men - Reznar's family, he supposed - waited to greet him, but he paused, wondering, to look at the wood of the steps. It was a type unknown in Narnia, a solid, reddish timber, whose grain ran in fascinating curls - he could not resist leaning forward to trace with his finger those whorls, curling like stormclouds, each step a wonder in itself.

Wonderful timber, and wonderfully fashioned. Yes, the visiting Telmarines had seemed rough, hard traders against the background of Cair Paravel, and the Herd had called them clever hunters, but here they were revealed as something else - as more than clever in their making, and as even... he felt a sudden misgiving... as even formidable, in their ability to dominate and use what they found around them: the Elephants, and the forest. Formidable, but also... he saw around him in the village now the reality of Telmar. He had been judging Telmar by a handful of men, of traders, all men, all, but now he was seeing a fuller life - women, families, the young and the old, some waiting to greet him, some working or about their own business in a life which he suddenly saw was much, much more complex than he had imagined. This was not a simple band of hunters and traders, a few scattered Men, suppliant to Narnia; this was a whole culture. A civilisation.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Kirrina!"

Green slippery seaweed coated the rocks, and in her haste to get to the familiar cave-mouth Lucy slithered, and banged her knee once or twice, when she almost fell, but the urgency of the moment meant that she hardly felt the hurts.

"Kirrina! It's time! He's _sent_!"

No voice replied, but that was not unusual; part of Kirrina's fascination was her half-hiddenness; even to find her felt like triumph, and to have her as a _friend_ was exciting, even when they did nothing more than dabble in the rockpools, and talk, or venture half-way back (Kirrina had never let her go any deeper) into the dark, drippy cave - and then there were the times when she had suggested things which felt very exciting indeed, like when they had joined to lure the Calormene Ambassador into getting very, very wet and muddy, after he had tried to make Susan unhappy. Though Lucy hadn't liked it, then, when Kirrina had joked (she supposed it had been a joke) about actually drowning him. Still, Kirrina - Kirrina, who could do anything at all, it seemed - had simply laughed when Lucy had objected and dropped the idea.

"Kirrina!" Lucy stood at the cave mouth, peering in, blocking out the sunlight with both hands around her face. Slowly she began to make out a darker shadow in the shadows, seated on a rock against the cave-wall, the shape of a girl of Lucy's own size, who - Lucy could see now - was looking directly back at her.

"Why don't you ever answer? We've got to go!"

"I don't need to answer." Kirrina's voice, as usual, was brimming with secret laughter, as if she knew much more than she chose to tell. "Anyone who loves me can find me, and anyone who doesn't... Well, you have found me, Daughter of Eve. Are you still set to journey with me, and find and free the Elephants? This will not be easy."

Lucy stamped her foot.

"You know I am! This is my job, as much as Edmund's. And you promised to help."

"I did. And are you ready to go _now?_"

Lucy touched the bottle of cordial which hung at her right side, and the dagger on her left hip, and then her chest. "Yes. I went to the Dwarfs, like you said; it's here. Should I have brought food? You said no satchel."

"Nothing that might catch in a narrow way."

"What about the cordial, or the dagger?"

"Winterfather's gifts? Never fear for those - they can go wherever I can! As for food, if we should separate, maybe you will go hungry. Do you fear that, Daughter of Eve?"

"Of course not!"

"Then we are ready, and we will go."

Lucy moved forward, treading carefully on the uneven floor.

"Is it...it is through the end of your cave? Is there a tunnel?"

"No. There is a river. Give me your hand."

"I...I'm not a very good swimmer."

"Perhaps not. But this river will not drown you. Give me your hand."

Lucy reached out and took hold; Kirrina's slim brown fingers gripped surprisingly strong, and pulling her towards the mysterious back of the cave where she had never been, and then splashing ankle-deep in water, waist-deep into a pool of dark water. The darkness had deepened, but against it Kirrina seemed more visible than before, the same Kirrina, with her clear brown skin and tumbling brown curls, and laughing, fierce, compelling eyes.

"Now, hold _tight!_"

And then the water was higher, or else they had sunk into it, Lucy thought confusedly. It was all around them, with a growing power, rippling and tugging and swirling and rushing with irresistible strength, dragging her down, down, under a crushing, terrifying, powerful weight of dark water.

**o-o-o-o-o**

"Windseer! Mrs Beaver! Forgive me... I'm somewhat distracted. My sister..."

"Queen Lucy? Majesty?"

"I don't know where she is. I wondered if you, if either of you, knew."

"No, Majesty."

"No. But there's no cause to be worriting, I'm sure of that."

"I really hope not! I've sent a Raven to Mr Tumnus. And I've asked them to scout out towards the west, and they say she hasn't gone that way, so she can't have..."

"To the west, Majesty? You have reason to think Her Majesty has left for the west?"

"The Elephants in Telmar... we all said it was something we had to do, if they were Narnians trapped there and enslaved...I know she was wanting to get help to Edmund. You heard his message."

Their two faces, so different from each other, looked at her with identical expressions of intent assessment and deep compassion.

"But she _promised_ that she wouldn't go anywhere without going with an adult, and who apart from you, and Mr Beaver...? It must be Tumnus. She must be with Tumnus... But she said... she sounded so..." The Queen's eyes flicked anxiously from one to the other of her Councillors; their silence fuelling her fears. "She sounded so _grown-up_. And she said _Trust me! _ And then... I haven't seen her since then."

Mrs Beaver laid one small, leathery paw on the Queen's arm, and spoke gently, but very certainly.

"She's not gone anywhere with Beaver, at any rate, nor Tumnus wouldn't take her anywhere, dear, not without saying to you. But what about her own special friend?"

"I'm sorry...I shouldn't be worrying either of you," said the Queen, and laughed, shakily. "She hasn't gone anywhere at all, I know, because the Ravens said they hadn't seen her. I just don't know where she is!"

Their expression of compassion did not lighten. Windseer spoke first.

"I read this matter otherwise, majesty. To me it seems, and I believe that it seems so to you also, that asking for your trust was sign that she is about her business as Queen, to care for and protect Narnians."

Susan stared at him; the attempt at laughter ebbed from her face.

"I think you're right. I do think so. But how can it be? She said she would only go with an adult, and the Ravens have seen nothing..."

"The _how_ I cannot say, but that she is about a valiant action I do not doubt. We rejoice that the trust between you is strong that she could call on it, and that you give it freely, though I sorrow that the giving brings its own price. Anxiety is a harder burden than action, Majesty. It is a right and fitting thing that the Council help you bear it."

Mrs Beaver pursed her lips.

"And to speak plain... well... the Ravens. They see all you can see from _air_, I don't doubt. But they don't see _all_. And as for _how_, well, there's nothing to be gained by blinking facts."

"What do you mean? What _fact?_"

"Her own friend, love. Who else would she go with, if not her own friend?"

"_Kirrina?_ No. No... she promised. She would only go with an adult. Kirrina's only a little girl!"

"Hsshh!" Mrs Beaver pushed gently at Susan, "Not a _girl_, dear Queen."

Windseer seemed startled. "She told you her name, Majesty? All four of you call her by name?"

"Oh, she told us part of it..." Susan brushed aside the irrelevancy. "She's got a much longer name... she was telling it to Lucy, bit by bit..."

"Oh, my dear. Oh, Windseer... " Mrs Beaver fell silent, her short, furry face working with mingled awe and sympathy.

"She pays you all great honour, Majesty, and to the Queen Lucy an honour not heard for many years."

"Who... Kirrina? What do you mean? She's only a little... Naiad."

"Not a Naiad, dear. Naiads show the sunshine on the water."

"A little water-girl, then! I don't know... whatever it is her sort's called. But she's only _little_... only young! What do you mean.. _many years_?"

"She's who she is; if she's been telling you her name, then you know it better than we do. And as to years - she's not one bound by _years_, dear, and not bound by death, either. Not much can hold or bind that one!"

"Not bound by death?" Susan was breathless with confusion, and then with sudden realisation. "An _Immortal?_ She looks like a little girl, but she's an _Immortal?_"

"Oh, yes, dear, like my own river. As old as Narnia itself, like the Great River. But she's... none of us knows her much. She only shows herself when she wants to be seen."

"She's a _river?_ An Immortal and a river? Not a Naiad? And _what_ river?"

"Naiads live _in_ rivers, dear, you know that," Mrs Beaver said, reproachfully. "Rivers and springs. But this one - she _is_ the river. She's like the Great River, she runs right the way across Narnia - comes down from above the Wall, and the dear knows where before that. But we none of us don't know her much. She doesn't have any Naiads, not any Beavers neither, of course. She runs on her own, that one, all the way."

"I don't understand! There's no other river which runs the length of Narnia - and where could she have taken Lucy?"

"Oh, she runs underground, dear. If you can see her - and there's plenty who can't - you must be able to see that."

"Underground!" The Queen looked aghast. "Underground! Then that's where Lucy is! Oh" and the words came out nearly in a wail, "Oh Lucy! She has gone... Mrs Beaver!"

"Now, don't you worry. Worry never helped anyone. If that one has taken to our Lucy, as she must have done... well, it's a mighty honour is all."

"But _Lucy_... she's only a child!"

Windseer's mouth quirked, but he shook away the thought, and answered seriously.

"She is a _Queen_, Your Majesty. You have yourself undertaken the Queenship of this country, and also to be its Chatelaine. You would not stand between her and her own Queenship?"

There was a pause, and then a slow, reluctant, "No..."

Mrs Beaver patted the Queen's arm comfortingly.

"Of course not! _We_ know how you four stand by each other - let alone she's growing up fast! She's two years older now than she was when you came, and she has seen and known more than most. And _all_ our lives are in the Lion's paws, remember, no matter what."

**o-o-o-o-o**

It had not even been their main village. Capun, their chief, lived elsewhere, it seemed, and was lying so ill that all four of his travelling companions discounted the idea that Edmund might pay a courtesy visit to him. Edmund recalled that it had been Capun who had decreed some years ago - many years ago - that there should be a halt to the hunting of Elephants for ivory, and decided that perhaps age was compounding the illness; maybe death was near. Did they elect their chiefs for life, he wondered? Or even elect them at all? It was suddenly clear to him how much Narnia did not know about Telmar.

"I must see him," Hoom announced. "King, it will be a two days' journey for me." he hesitated and then continued, "Better that you rest here until I return, I think. We can all travel then to find the elephants who work for the logging."

It was a shift from Hoom's earlier insistence on being beside the Narnian king every time they met with Elephants - definitely a recommendation, not an insistence, Edmund thought, and wondered uneasily how much this was because Hoom had begun to believe that the mission to free the Elephants was failing - had already failed, and that close guard need not be kept on the visitor? It was a dispiriting thought, and even more dispiriting was that he found in himself an answering reluctance to make that last part of his journey, to see the last group of Elephants and try to win them to freedom. If he failed a third time, then he had failed indeed; it was easier to fall in equably with Hoom's suggestion.

And they would have stopped the night in the village in any case, and Reznar's family - if all these were his family - were friendly, if curious, and the thought of a meal in warm domesticity was appealing, and it was even somehow heartening to hear that it was the one he had anticipated - goat stew.

He stood to farewell Hoom, who was clearly anxious to be away quickly, and then sat back down where he had been, cross-legged, on the broad woven grass mat, beside Reznar.

"You can eat it, King?" It was Hurrdah, Reznar's tall, graceful mother.

Why not? he had wondered, and his question must have shown in his face, because she replied, courteously, "We have heard that you count beasts as brothers, and ate only plant-food on the journey. Or is it only the ivory-bearers that you hold to be like humans?"

"No. Dumb beasts are not my cousins, but all the Talking Beasts of Narnia have my love and care."

She raised her eyebrows, but made no further comment, handed him a bowl of the stew. It smelt very good, and he accepted it gratefully.

"Better than travel-rations, hey, King?" came in a sharp whisper from behind.

Edmund smiled without turning round; he knew Wily's voice.

"Nor so different, either," he said over his shoulder. There's fresney in here, and that tree-fungus, if I don't miss my guess."

"Woodcurd. Fresney'll grow anywhere, but you can thank Nim's love-life for the woodcurd; he brought it back to give to..."

There was a sound of a scuffle. Edmund grinned, but didn't turn around. Beside him, Reznar grinned too, pointedly, at the young woman sitting beside him. She continued to eat, placidly, though her colour rose a little.

It was to distract attention from herself, Edmund thought, that she looked across at him and asked, "How do you find our village, King? How does it compare to Narnia?"

"I much admire the buildings here, and the welcome that has been given me!" he answered, easily enough; the past months in Narnia had given him great experience in fielding such open - and possibly troublesome - questions. "I have had no chance to experience anything else yet."

"We will have to show you more! You are staying with us until Hoom returns?"

"Yes, if he returns in two days, as he said."

He did not miss the quick glance which passed between her and Reznar, and noted privately that whether Hoom had returned or not, he would leave in two days to find the Elephants of the timber-teams.

Meanwhile, Telmar did indeed lack the courtliness of more eastern nations; Reznar had not thought to introduce the woman, though she was apparently one of his family, and clearly close to him. Well, if the host will not, then the guest must, he thought...

"May I ask your name, mistress?"

"I am called Mavram. This Reznar is my brother. And this," she gestured to the girl who was pressing up behind her, "is Izrah, our younger sister, who is very curious about the man from the east."

Edmund laughed. The girl was a little younger than Lucy; her eyes were round with amazement.

"What would you like to ask me?" he said, but Izrah hid her face in her sister's sleeve.

"I think she wants to know why Easterners think animals can talk."

"If her brother has reported truly, she will know that he saw in the east animals that can talk."

"Half-beasts, I saw," Reznar admitted, grudgingly. "And one or two small beasts that spoke. But no elephants."

"Nor do they speak here," said Mavram, "and so the trade road will soon be open. Once Hoom has told Capun..."

"I will not speak of the trade road yet," Edmund said gravely. "That will be a matter for me to talk with your leaders after I have concluded my meeting with the Elephants."

"Reznar is a leader!" Izrah darted her face out to say, indignantly. Reznar himself looked a little taken aback at that, and Mavram seemed uncomfortable.

"Izrah!" came as a sharp rebuke from Hurrdah; he was surprised to realise she was so near. "Little girls should not speak of such things at such a time."

_At such a time?_ Meaning when Capun lay ill, and the future leadership was in doubt, Edmund wondered. But...

"Let's talk of other matters." he said, quickly. "I have heard that Telmarine women are wise in the ways of plants, Mistress Mavram. Is it wild plants for food that you know, or garden plants?"

"You only know two kinds of plants in the east?" she mocked. "We know many here!"

"What others then?" he smiled, and Izrah re-emerged to listen to her sister.

"There are many herbs for healing, of course, but much other use as well. Do you have vines, in the east? Or berries for washing? bark for cloth, and trees for building..."

"Trees for building? Like these?"

"Yes. Our houses grow very high, do they not? Men build higher now than they did once, my grandmother says."

"Very high indeed," he replied absently. "Tell me, if women deal with trees, and men deal with animals, who controls the business of the timber-Elephants in the south-west forest?"

He heard a muted crow from behind, and "hear him! Smoky!"; evidently Wily was much amused at the question.

Mavram, on the other hand, was not. She jerked her head angrily, and said, "Women. We should control where they go and what trees they take."

"But men own the beasts, and men drive them!" came from behind, and Reznar looked uncomfortable.

"The king is tired, doubtless, and would like to rest."

Once again, it was Hurrdah's cool, strong voice, and once again, it effectively stopped the discussion; Edmund acquiesced to her suggestion, and allowed Reznar to lead him to a sleeping corner, rather like a stall in a stables. It was his first night to sleep under a roof since he had left Cair Paravel, he reflected; he would not be able to signal his usual 'all's well' tonight.

Nevertheless, he thought, things were not quite as desolate as he had feared just a few days earlier. He was beginning to know something of Telmarine culture, about their leadership, and about the divisions between men and women in relation to the timber-Elephants; he resolved that on the morrow he would make it his business to find out a great deal more.

**o-o-o-o-o**

When next she was able to think, the water was sinking down from around her; the air around her smelt damp and earthy, and somehow spacious, as if she was standing in a vast cavern. She felt her hand immovably caught, and realised slowly that it was Kirrina's strong grip which still held her; she tugged away a little, and the grip tightened in response.

"Hold tight, still, Daughter of Eve. Our journey is only half-done."

She could see nothing. She could hear the water, making gurgling, sucking sounds as it drained, and more distantly a thread, a whispering, of other noises through the dark. She peered into the nothingness, and thought she could see Kirrina's bright, intent eyes, her cheekbones and her forehead, but that was all.

"Where are we? What was that?"

"We are close to the western border of Narnia. We came through the water."

Through the water. But they had not been swimming. They had been under the water, or had been part of the water. Lucy felt a sudden breathlessness, a sick, panicky feeling; the cool spaciousness of the air was maybe a delusion, maybe she was trapped, and the dark was coming in... Kirrina's hand closed even more tightly on her wrist.

"Be calm. What is my name, Daughter of Eve?"

Kirrina's name. Lucy pulled her mind to concentrate on that, on what she had been told, away up in the open air. Open air, and just before the Trade Fair; it felt unimaginably far away. She reached down into the memory, concentrated hard, and the sick feeling began to go away.

"It's very long. Kirrina... Kirrinakgurruna. But you haven't told me all of it, you said."

"No. Nor can I yet, but you do well. Hear this now... Kitagkirrinakgurrunalon."

"Should I say it?"

"Ah! Daughter of Eve! You grow wiser by the day!" Kirrina's voice sounded exultant. "No, do not say it, but hold it ready to be said, if I ask it."

"I will." It was good to know Kirrina was pleased with her, but Lucy still felt a slight sickness; it was strange to feel so unsure of things. "You said we came through the water. Was it a river? Was I breathing water?"

"Yes, the river. As long as you hold my hand, the river is yours to live in or to travel in. We have travelled far."

"I _thought_ we were going fast!" Lucy felt more herself now, more sure of herself and of Kirrina, too, who just for a moment had seemed like someone she didn't know at all.

Kirrina laughed. "Yes, very fast! But now will come a harder part. The river travels far under Narnia, but it comes into Narnia from other lands. Do you recall that I did not play with you in wintertime, Daughter of Eve?"

Lucy felt wary again; it had been a long time of desertion, of hanging on to believing that Kirrina was still her friend, though she wouldn't come to play.

"Yes."

"In wintertime the great glaciers hold the river tight. But in the summertime, now, they let me be free, and it seeps down through rock, through the rock which the Narnians call the Wall, which marks the end of their land. You have done well, and wisely, to trust me this far. But now we must find our way through rock, which will take more than trust."

"What will it take?"

But Kirrina was already tugging again at her hand, and Lucy followed, stumbling.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Dry. Thin shadowed faces, and thin, spindly limbs, thin as twigs, but drier than any twig, long spidery limbs; they looked as if they would snap at a touch.

"Look away," hissed Kirrina. "Look down at your feet. They don't like to be looked at."

"But they are Narnians?" Lucy asked, obediently looking down.

"In a way," said Kirrina. "Shhhh..."

She could feel them now, all around. The more she didn't look at them, the more she could feel them, around her and behind her.

Kirrina spoke, but not in words, or not words Lucy knew. It sounded like a dry rustling of leaves, not like Kirrina's own voice at all. And a dry rustling response, like a soft hissing, and then a silence.

"Shhhhhh..." Kirrina said again. It felt like ages, waiting, and then Kirrina tugged her forward again, and there was a long thin crack in the rock, which hadn't been there before, a crack like a dark thread running from top to bottom of the cavern wall, and Kirrina was pulling her towards it.

"But I can't _fit_.." she began.

"You are with me and you _can!_ I have bargained with them for a way for you. You _must._"

Lucy felt panic begin to catch at her breath again; the dark, urgent face before her softened a little.

"Did you not demand that I help you to reach these Elephants, Human Child? This is the way there."

If this was the way, this was the way. She did not see how, but maybe _-_ she was at the rock, and it was _hard_ to make her body do what she wanted it to, even with Kirrina's hand still tugging her on. But if it was the only way, then she _had_ to... and then she was inside.

It was wrong, and _not where she should be_. The rock felt - not hostile, but not her own place, _not Narnia_. She felt a terrible scraping; the rock scraped at her side, at all of her, and anyway, how could she be _inside_ the rock? She tugged back urgently at Kirrina, but it did no good; she was pulled relentlessly forward, and up, and the rock was hard, and all around her. "_We can't stop!_" Kirrina hissed, "_Climb!_"- and for an instant Lucy felt almost as if it was an enemy pulling at her, and wanted to fight back, to pull away and somehow get back to green grass and open air. But...

But this was the way to the Elephants, and the way Kirrina - _Kitagkirrinakgurruna... __- _was leading, and somehow she _was_ moving through the rock, held by the fierce, clutching hand and fiercer eyes, and there was no help for it.

She gave in, and set aside the impossibility of it all, and began to climb, inside the rock where it made no sense to be climbing, but somehow footholds were there, and if she wasn't exactly breathing...well, she supposed she hadn't been breathing in the water, either.

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: **Australians may recognise the _mimi_, the rock-spirits, from Yolngu legend and painting; they live in the high rock-country of Arnhemland. And they were written about by the late Patricia Wrightson in her YA fantasy series _The Song of Wirrun_.

Also, alas, the months of July and August are going to be very cram-packed for me, and I don't know how well I'll be able to keep up the updates to this story. :( Apologies if (_if!_ It's pretty well a certainty!) there are gaps in those two months.


	10. Listening to Silence

**The Ivory Merchants**

**Chapter Ten: Listening to silence **

Two days. Edmund woke, on his first morning in Reznar's village, more than ever determined to wait no longer than the two days of Hoom's absence before resuming his journey to find and free the lost Calves of the Nhaarh. The dumb elephants who worked the capstans, or the ferries, who had plodded forward, solid and unresponsive as the steamrollers he dimly remembered—it seemed that he must accept that _they_ were truly Telmarine elephants. But the timber-hauling elephants—they had been seen by the Ravens showing compassion one for another, which was surely a sign that they thought and felt, and could be—_must_ be!— Narnian Elephants. True, as Nem had hinted about the ferry-slaves, not speaking did not necessarily mean unable to speak—even, he felt uneasily, unable to speak did not mean unable to think or to feel. But he had seen nothing of either thought or feeling, and for the time he must concentrate on those Beasts he had not yet seen, to try all in his power to search out the lost Calves, so that he could persuade the Nhaarh to find safety away from these hunters, before they resumed their hunt.

He could begin in two days. Meanwhile, he had set himself the task of using that time to learn all he could about this strange people who lived atop the Wall, and who, it seemed, had devised ways to descend it. The capstan near the cliff-edge—so hurriedly dismantled, and the slave-elephants taken away inland, so carefully not mentioned, while the king and his escort had climbed painfully with ropes and slings—that was plainly enough designed to lower men and supplies into Narnia. Telmar was friendly to Narnia now, and even petitioners in the matter of the trade-road, but Edmund had been king long enough, now, to realise that a nation devising a secret way to cross a border could not be left unwatched. Therefore—he would spend these two days finding everything he could about these people.

The household was already stirring; Edmund sat up and looked about him. Reznar's place lay empty, but other young men, and older men, were about, some still just rising from sleeping-corners like his own, but others apparently readying for the unknown business of their day. He could hear children, too, and an indistinct bustle not unlike a dwarf-holt beginning the day. This great house must hold more families than one, it seemed; in that it was more like a little castle, or keep. Who ruled here, he wondered? Reznar?

He rose and pulled on his breeks, tucking in his shirt and running his fingers through his hair, as the quickest way to maybe seem presentable, before he went to see what ways there were here to make himself clean for the new day. He was just turning out into the larger central space of the hall when he became aware that one of the men, an older man, a dark man, and stocky rather than tall, was standing in the shadow of the next sleeping-nook, and was watching him silently.

"Met, Highness." The words came jerkily, as if this were one unused to speech, or to graciousness.

Dark, stocky... and familiar-seeming. A man of few words, standing back... Edmund's mind flashed to a scene, many months back, to the first tentative visit of the ivory traders to Cair Paravel, to a man who had stood behind the Telmarine spokesman, Hoom. The silent, watchful brother...

With an effort Edmund reached into his memory and fetched out the man's name.

"Well met, Gul. You see that I have come as we bargained, to travel through your land."

Gul nodded, and then slightly tilted his head towards the front of the hall, as if in invitation for Edmund to walk in that direction.

It was the way he had been proposing to go, it was the way to the place where they had eaten the night before, and presumably the way to find water to wash; nevertheless, the king felt a ripple of unease that he was being guided into the path this man wanted him to take, and not allowed to wander freely in the great house. But if so, it was not the time to let his hosts know that he saw through their manoeuvrings—and in any case, he wanted breakfast.

**o-o-o-o-o**

The hard scraping of the rock was suddenly gone. Kirrina's grasp loosened, stroked gently along Lucy's forearm in a final caress, and let go. For just a moment Lucy felt as if she was falling into nothingness, felt the clench of fear on her. It felt odd, _unsafe_, to be separate again, after travelling so far, held so tight.

"You are in air again, Queen. Open your eyes."

Lucy opened her eyes, cautiously, and then clenched them tight-closed again, against the piercing brightness of this daylight world.

"Queen? Open your eyes."

Lucy shook her head, and stood for a moment or two longer, breathing the freshness, and gradually learning to feel again the meaning of sun on her skin. Sun, but cool sun, morning sun, she decided, and the air dry but somehow clear, and yet different from Cair Paravel air, and curiously blank, despite the sharp, sweet sound of birdcalls, without the constant background shhh-shhh of the sea. Even before opening her eyes she could feel it; they were on top of the Wall.

They were standing on rocky, damp ground, not far from a belt of low, scrubby trees. She swung around, exhilarated, and looked back to the east, to the laughing morning sun, and then left and right, eagerly.

"We did it! Kirrina, you did it! Are they far away? The Elephants—are they here?" Then back again to peer into the shadows of the trees, "Are they in the forest?"

"We will find them! _You_ will find them, Queen."

Lucy paused, distracted. "You called me _Queen_. You never call me Queen!"

Kirrina laughed, and span around, her arms spread wide. "You did so _well!_ Not everyone can travel my ways and the rock way with such courage. Not since the Winter first gripped Narnia have I tried to bring any this way. You are becoming a great and valiant queen indeed, and so I will call you!"

"_You_ brought me. You're the one helping me to find the Elephants and bring them back to Narnia."

Kirrina stopped short in her twirling, grave again in an instant.

"To bring them to Narnia... do not ask that of me, Queen. "

"You... you won't help bring them back to Narnia? That's the whole reason we're here!" The words began as a gasp of astonishment, and ended as an accusing wail.

"I cannot promise that. To find them, I will help you in that if I can_. _And for that you will need to listen, not speak bitterness."

"But you won't help to bring them..."

Lucy's eyes were wide with the beginning of anger. Kirrina paused, as if to consider; her expression was unreadable.

"Queen... do you know my name?

"Yes. Part of it." Lucy's voice was choked with resentment.

"Then you know that I have trusted you."

"Yes. _Partly_."

A small smile tugged at Kirrina's lips.

"Then trust me, Queen. Believe me, it is time to listen, and not speak, if you would find your people."

It was still a struggle, but Lucy swallowed, and achieved victory enough to say, if a fraction resentfully still, "Listen what to? I can't hear anything."

"No. You need to learn to hear. Come away up near the trees; it will be easier for us both near the trees." And she led the way to softer, higher ground.

"I'm listening," said Lucy. She craned her neck, as if greater height could bring the sound of Elephants.

Kirrina laughed, softly.

"You need not stand so tall, Queen! You will need to hear with your whole body. Think _here._" She pressed her hand flat, a little above Lucy's middle. "Here, and through your whole body. Kneel down now and spread out your hands, flat against the earth. Close your eyes again, and hear with your body as well as your ears, _inside_ your ears... Good. Listen, like that, and maybe you will hear..."

Kirrina's voice faded, and Lucy knew without looking that she had gone. Well... trust. Lucy waited, with her eyes obediently closed. It felt almost like a game, but... she squeezed her eyes shut, and _listened_. Nothing. Just the birds, calling, and... but no, birdsong was a sound coming into her outside ear—_inside your ears_, Kirrina had said, and _with your whole body_. She tried again, hands spread wide, listening and thinking, _body, body, body..._

_Something_ ...she couldn't hear it, but it was there. Her eyes flew open. She had heard _something_—heard it or felt it, she couldn't say which. A wave rolling through her, or a low, low rumble... Her eyes flew open.

"Kirrina!"

And Kirrina was there, sprung from nowhere, and bright with triumph.

"You heard? You felt it?"

"Yes! _Something._ Was it the Elephants? It made me think of thunder, or... it was a _bit_ like Murmuring Valley..."

"It was not the Elephants. But you are _learning to hear_, Daughter of Eve! Ah, bright air above the ground! See how this River has come from her hidden places, and teaches the Daughter of Eve!"

Lucy smiled, puzzled, but hopeful again. It was so hard to know, with Kirrina, what things would suddenly see her brimful with joy, or what would make her angry, or how she thought about _anything_. Still, this wild delight surely showed that they were making progress? And if she could once find the Elephants, from there it would be easy, with or without Kirrina's help.

"So can I hear the Elephants now? Can we find them?"

"Not yet. Not yet. You have not heard Elephants yet. Close your eyes, and listen again. It will be softer this time, farther away. But Queen, truly, by the time the sun is high, I think you will be ready to hear them indeed. Close your eyes again."

Lucy closed her eyes.

**o-o-o-o-o**

Gul stayed in sight or rather, Edmund supposed, kept the visiting king in sight until he had found Mavram and Izrah near the kitchens, and been taken to the water-butt and earth-closets alongside the hall. The sisters were much amused there, beside the high timber walls, to see the exercises which, he assured them he did every morning, and most nights. He chatted to them as he stretched, bent, and twisted, vigorously, in a constant stream of cheerful, enjoyable nothings to fill the air with their laughing; they did not even notice the Bird which sat silent and watching at the side-point of the high roof, and then as silently glided away again, easterly.

The older man rejoined them over breakfast, sitting a little behind Edmund and across from the two girls. He said nothing, but Edmund understood: his conversation, no less than his movements, was under close scrutiny.

He was careful, therefore, to begin by talking of matters which surely were indifferent, and not likely to raise a suspicion that he was gathering intelligence as well as seeking the Elephants. He spoke cheerfully of the breakfast provided—a thin nutty gruel, with honey alongside to sweeten it—and listened smiling to Izrah's meandering, self-important explanation of how she had helped to toast and grind the seeds for it, and what her mother had said about the honey. As she began to grow more rambling in her talk, he looked to the older sister, and then glanced up at the rafters, criss-crossing the dark emptiness overhead.

"This house is a wonder to me. Your brother did not prepare me for such grandeur."

Mavram looked at him cautiously, as if to check that he was not mocking; Izrah, though, sat up eagerly, as if ready to expatiate on the glories of the house.

"My father built it! He was the cleverest builder _ever_, because when he was only _our_ age, he found out how..."

Her father? Then also Reznar's and Mavram's father, and Hurrdah's husband. He was suddenly very curious about this unseen man, who built with such grandeur, but whose name had never yet been mentioned. Dead, perhaps? or gone a journey, like Hoom?

"Your father and your mother _both_, Izrah!" Mavram was saying, in rebuking, silencing tone. "Both women and men provide for the followers."

The little girl wriggled, in mixed acknowledgement and impatience. "I _know_... it's in the story...

_The followers_, Edmund noted, and recalled Izrah's indignant claim the night before: _Reznar is a leader!_ Was that claim based on providing for followers?

"How does building a house provide for followers?" he asked, and hoped the question seemed like an idle curiosity.

"Not the building alone, king," Mavram replied, "you have seen yourself how many men may sleep here, and are fed. But the building, too, gives many the feasting which in the old days..."

There was no sound from behind, but Mavram's eyes flicked, behind and then back to Edmund. She paused for just a heartbeat, and then began to speak rapidly, a little nervously. "But it is ill to talk of old feasts when we have this good breakfast before us, freshly made by my mother."

Edmund understood well enough. There had been a sign, a gesture, and Mavram had been warned away from talk of old feasts. Good. He did not want to talk of such, himself; he thought he was beginning to realise all too plainly what those feasts had been, and was sickened at the thought.

But it was his part to seem as unconscious of what had happened as little Izrah, who had been toying with the spoon in the honey-dish, and seen nothing. He forced himself to seem to want to eat more, and smiled in reply to Mavram's gambit.

"She has made this good breakfast, and also made the house we eat in! So women also work to build houses, then? I had thought that men and women worked separately in Telmar."

Mavram's gaze shifted again, past him to Gul; she spoke a little defiantly. "In old days we did. But times change."

_Times change?_ Edmund wondered. And was this something that Gul resisted?

"And with the changing times, women begin to build houses?" he probed, carefully not looking at either sister, and seeming occupied in stirring his gruel.

There was a squeal of hilarity from Izrah—and a curious short grunt from behind him.

He looked up, perplexed. One sister was bubbling with amusement; the other seemed suddenly furious.

"Have I offended, Mistress? You said that women had begun to build houses..."

"We _always_ have done!" She spoke with energy, but also anger—and not for him only. Though she kept her eyes squarely on the king now, something in the tilt of her head, and the way she pitched her voice told him that she was addressing Gul as well.

"Us women showed the men how!" put in Izrah, proudly.

"Always have made the houses? Then what has changed?"

Mavram sat up very straight. Speaking clearly, as if to someone slow of understanding, she asked him, "What make our houses, king?"

"Who...?"

"Of _what_ do we make our houses, Eastern king?"

Of course. Trees. Plants were women's business, and wooden houses, therefore...

"Trees. Plants. I see now why it is women's business. But how do you... "

From behind, Gul's voice, heavily. "_Only_ plants."

Mavram took one or two angry breaths, then, apparently baffled, nodded in acquiescence.

"Yes. Only with plants."

"No burnt limestone? or clay, or stone, not even to hold these pillars? Or iron to hold down..."

"No. Only plants." She seemed to have recovered somewhat from the unspoken tussle with Gul. "We shape the trees, and fit them together, and tree-rope binds the roof, and the wisemother brews from the forest-blood, and spreads where the trees join, which holds them..." She gestured with her hands: _firm, rigid, solid_.

Edmund drew a deep breath. This was truly an amazing architecture. These were truly an amazing people.

Gul rose to his feet.

"No more now."

Of food or talk, Edmund wondered? But Gul was apparently leaving. He looked directly and heavily at Mavram as he turned to go.

"Old ways left no debts."

Izrah scrambled to her feet; Mavram, her lips thin and her eyes stormy, leaned forward and began to gather together the few simple dishes. Breakfast was clearly over.

Edmund watched in silence. Whatever that meant, _old ways leave no debts_, it seemed well understood, and resented, by Mavram. But his business here was not to untangle local quarrels, but first to ensure the safety of any Elephants in this land, and secondly to gather what information he could for the safety of all Narnia.

He set his mind to sorting through what fragments of information he had already, trying to piece them together into one whole picture.

Leadership came from provision for followers. In the old way, through the slaughter of Elephants, for tusks and... he tried not to see the scenes his mind insistently pushed at him... _meat_. The feasts which had once bound leaders and followers together followed the ruthless slaughter of thinking, feeling Narnians. But the new way—had Mavram's father been a pioneer of this? In the new way, when the trade route had been blocked, and the hunts forbidden, they had found a value in knowledge of forest-lore, and men had made names by using women's knowledge in house-building; then feasts had been at the roof-raising, not at slaughter. And Telmar was in flux, shifting between the two, a struggle which he thought showed even in the squabble, the night before, between Mavram and her brother about whether men or women should control the timber-hauling Elephants.

But if this unknown Capun died, might there not be two struggles in Telmar? The struggle between the old ways and the new, and a struggle for leadership. And if so, what might that mean for Narnia? Or what might his own actions mean for Telmar?

_Reznar is a leader_, the ardent little sister had said, but he doubted very much that Reznar, despite his great house, could really contend for leadership. The journey overland had shown him always a follower, subordinate to Hoom. His father, perhaps, had been positioning himself for such a thing, but... he must find out about the father. In the meantime—Hoom's departure showed certainly that he was jockeying for power as the old leader died. Jockeying for power, and wanting to use Edmund himself, and the Narnian connection, as tools in his bid. And it was an odd alliance, surely, between Hoom, holding to the old ways, and this family, which despite Mavram's indignation at his blundering dismissal of women's history of house-building by women, held to the new?

Mavram's broke into his thoughts. "Will you move, king? These mats need to be..."

"Of course."

He followed her out onto the balcony, and waited while she shook the mats vigorously, one after the other, marshalling his thoughts, and his words. Now, while they were alone, before she went back inside...

"Mavram, wait."

She turned from had been spreading the mats along the balustrade, in the warm sun. He spoke, quietly, hurriedly.

"Forgive me, Mistress. I do not mean to give you pain, but I want not to speak amiss, either to your mother or to Izrah. Is your father yet alive?"

No. He saw from the pain which leapt to her eyes, that her father was indeed dead. But more than pain, he noted; her face showed anger as well, not for him, but about the death. Whatever had happened, this was a death which was felt by this proud daughter as unjust.

"No. He is not."

Her sorrow... whatever had happened, her sorrow woke his compassion. He reached to touch her arm.

"The breath of Aslan..." But she did not know Aslan. He tried again. "Comfort be with you, and with this house, Mistress."

"Thank you," she said, almost curtly, and went back into the dark inside.

He stayed, leaning on the sturdy balustrade, one hand half-unconsciously tracing the heavy carving on the outer edge, as he thought what it all might mean. An unjust death, perhaps, of a leader in Telmar. And conflict, or conflict brewing, close to Narnia.

_Times change. _ Times change, and houses which once had been built by women only were now built by men and Elephants as well. And: _men build higher now than they did once, my grandmother says,_ Mavram had said, over supper. That meant men had been building for some decades, surely? But not so long that the "old ways" had been completely forgotten—and the houses had been growing taller and greater since then? Why? And the houses had grown higher over the time that men had been part of the building—and men dealt with animals. _A work fit for Men,_ Reznar had said, but also, _the elephants work for us there, too... the roof-raising._

He drew a deep breath. Elephants, and the roof-raising! No matter what knowledge the women had had, this great roof could not have been raised by human power alone, with this scanty population. But Elephants... the pieces of information all seemed to come together of their own accord, now.

Izrah's father—the _cleverest builder ever_, she had said, only to be silenced and diverted by her sister's admonition to remember the role women had played. And Izrah _had_ been diverted, as _he himself had been_, he realised, silenced from any talk of what had been the discoveries and achievements of the cleverest builder ever, in that era of greater and greater houses. Was it not, surely, that her father had been the one who had discovered the way to harness the hauling power of Elephants?—maybe not the first simple use of ropes slung over tree-limbs, but more probably had found how to multiply that power many times with capstans, to winch up these huge timbers, had perhaps discovered ratcheting, too, and the use of counter-weights...

They had tried to hide one capstan from him at the cliff-edge; but that use, for descending the cliff, plainly was a use developed _after_ the Winter, an offshoot of what had been developed here, for building. Developed for building, as part of the way Telmarines struggled for status and power among themselves, yes, but more recently, some other intelligence—Hoom? Gul?—had seen how it could be used to enter Narnia. Whoever controlled this secret, controlled the trade route into Narnia. And by simple suppression of talk, they had hidden in silence the advances in technology—suppression not just of Izrah's naive boast, but also, he now saw, of his own questions about the methods of the house-building.

_How..._, he asked, and _Only plants_, Gul had said, and Mavram had picked up the warning, and talked only of materials, not of methods, and he himself had not even seen how he was being steered away from what they did not want him to hear. The old error, to not hear what was not said. It was an error, he resolved, that he would not make again.

**o-o-o-o-o**

It was hard work, _listening—_pressing against the earth and straining to catch the low, light fluttering, neither sound nor not-sound, the uneasy sense that there was a call, a ripple in the world, just beyond her perception...

The morning wore away. The ripples grew fainter, harder and harder to catch. Lucy pressed her lips tight and _listened_.

Kirrina's voice dropped to a whisper, a breath. "Do you hear, Queen?"

Each time, a pause to be certain, and then... "Yes."

And fainter still, until—

"Drink, Queen."

Kirrina was kneeling beside her, offering water in her two cupped hands.

"You have worked hard, and your people need you to stay well."

Yes, she was tired. She drank thirstily, and felt the better for the draught.

"I can't stop, though, Kirrina. I need to learn to hear the Elephants. I know which direction to go, sort of, but..."

"No." Kirrina 's dark eyes were intent. "You have learnt now all I can teach. I have stilled the waters; now it is for you to listen again. This time you listen for the Elephants indeed. Listen deep, for the cries of your people will be very faint."

Lucy closed her eyes, pressed again to the earth, and concentrated.

Nothing... nothing?

Or... something so faint, so lost and swallowed up... She looked miserably at Kirrina.

"I can't... "

"Shhh..." Kirrina's lively face had become still and stern as stone. With her eyes, not with her voice, she commanded "_Listen!_"

And again... with her whole body, to try to find again through the clamour of forest-noise that faint, wavering movement of sound-but-not-sound...

and there was...

Her eyes flew open, and she stared at Kirrina, not daring to believe that what she had felt was what she had come so far to find.

But that... how could she not have heard it? She closed her eyes again, sat up, cross-legged, and listened. Faint, wavering, but unmistakeable... like a thread to be followed, and never lost.

So—from here the path was clear. She scrambled to her feet. She had been brought this far, and from here it was up to her. She took a deep breath, wriggled her shoulders to feel on them the small, steady weight of her cordial and her dagger, and checked once to see that she had the Dwarven-work still with her. Up to her now.

"I can hear them! So I have to go now." Her whole body was tensed, wound tight as an arbalest set to fire. "You were wonderful, and you've helped me a lot. Thank you very much for bringing me here."

Kirrina's grave, watchful face was suddenly alive with quick, sharp-eyed laughter.

"Does the Queen dismiss the River, now she has no more need of her, then?"

"Oh, no! _No!_ But you said you wouldn't help with the next bit, to bring them back to Narnia. And you've helped me with what you said..."

"I may do more yet, before we are through. But for now, valiant Queen, I will follow where you lead."

Some of the tension drained from Lucy's figure. She gave a quick smile, swung about and the two set off, southward, along the forest edge.

**o-o-o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

**A/N: **Welcome back, kind and patient readers! :) I really hope that my next update won't loiter as long in the offing! And I would very much welcome feedback and criticism of this chapter, as I try to get the writing back on track.**  
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